In early 2020 I found that my left ear felt like it needed to “pop” like anyone who has flown on a plane is familiar with. It felt stuffy and my hearing felt muted. I tried all the tricks, but it wouldn’t resolve.

I’m no doctor, but I suspected that the root cause was probably the late nights, lack of exercise, and generally physically run-down state I was in after a six month due diligence slog to sell my business. I figured I’d give it a bit of time to settle down, and didn’t go to the doctor.

Soon enough, casually going to the doctor wasn’t the easiest thing to do, as the world went into lockdown in the first half of 2020, and I was battling new kinds of work stress as I juggled two jobs getting SearchPilot off the ground as an independent startup and helping Distilled settle into Brainlabs — all while battling to help both companies thrive and survive in uncertainty and adversity.

Anyway, long story short, I didn’t go to the doctor for a couple of years. During that time, I felt like my hearing got better and worse, but was never too debilitating. In 2022 it took a turn for the worse. I took a high street hearing test, spoke to my GP, and got myself referred to a specialist. An MRI, an examination, and a souped-up hearing test later, and lots of things had been ruled out.

Which seems to be the way that the most likely diagnosis was “ruled in”. I guess squishy meat robots aren’t the easiest things to debug, but it’s still a little frustrating to have a squishy diagnosis. The most likely thing was Menière’s disease. The good news was:

  1. I wasn’t suffering from the vertigo and nausea that some people suffer with
  2. There was no reason to think that it would affect my other ear

The bad news was:

  1. There was no prospect of recovering lost hearing
  2. It was likely to get worse in the affected ear

They said I could look into getting a hearing aid, but I still felt like my hearing fluctuated (something that all the medical professionals I’ve spoken to seemed somewhat sceptical about) and with partial loss in only one ear, I felt like the downsides outweighed the benefits. I’ve since read that a lot of people in similar situations feel the same.

Could be worse. So I figured I’d just put up with it. Didn’t seem like there was a lot else to do.

It was a little frustrating. There were definitely times when I struggled to hear things, and I was excited for the release of the hearing aid functionality in Apple Airpods because I figured it would give me a cheap (free actually, since I already have Airpods) way of finding out if hearing aids would help.

Before the UK could get its act together to license Airpods for “medical” use (it’s not clear to me what the risks are here, and the regulatory state should get a grip and just allow people to try this kind of tech IMO), something changed.

Unrelated to the hearing journey, I decided last summer that it was finally time to level up how seriously I was taking my health and wellness, and I started working out more seriously and overhauled my diet under the watchful eyes of Daily Body Coach. Prior to that, I’d been staying somewhat in shape playing basketball every week, and had been eating fairly well, but slipping into eating too much bacon and sausage for sure. I’d noticed that I was slowing down, getting injured more, getting soft and pudgier. Inevitable in your mid-40s? No, I thought. I can do better.

So, cutting out almost all processed meat, eating more good protein and less carbs, adding strength, resistence and flexibility training 4x / week on top of a couple of basketball sessions and I was seeing results. I felt leaner and fitter, and I gradually replaced fat with muscle - to the extent that I’m heavier than I’ve been since college - with a recently-measured 14% body fat level. That’s in the top 3% of men my age, apparently. I didn’t get my body fat measured before I started working out more, but based on some estimates of fat loss and measurements of total weight change, I guess I was at around 17% before I started.

For fun, here’s my weight chart:

My weight trend journey

Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that when Apple released the hearing test functionality (which was immediately enabled in the UK) I jumped on it and started tracking my hearing along with all the other stuff I was tracking.

And:

Trends in my hearing

I can’t be sure that the health, exercise, strength and general wellness efforts are the sole reason, or even any of the reason for the hearing improvement, but:

  1. I have confirmed I’m not going crazy - my hearing has fluctuated
  2. I have seen some improvement - contrary to what the doctor said was possible
  3. I obviously don’t know if this improvement will stick around
  4. The latest test has crossed the threshold into the “low to none” band of hearing loss, and subjectively, I’m finding it much less debilitating at this level

I don’t know if this changes the diagnosis. I’m going to share all this with my doctor too, but I thought I’d write it up and get it out there in case it helps anyone and so I may be able to connect with others in a similar boat.