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Will Inner Ear Damage Cause Suffocation?


LisaL

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It seems the respiratory system also involves the ears?

So it does, and surprisingly, as what most students of physiology learn about respiration is that it is controlled primarily by specialized parts of the brain that are sensitive to chemicals in the blood linked to CO2. That the inner ear based vestibular system plays more than a subtle role in controlling respiration is – to the casual student, obviously not to Rubens, Yates, and Bronstein, the authors of studies described in the linked-to pages – unexpected.

 

I ask as this article is bothering me immensely and my bro had meningitis recently and his inner ears are both damaged and declining

I’m sorry to hear of you brother’s illness, but wouldn’t worry about it causing him to die of respiratory failure. Meningitis of all forms is an acute illness, so if he survived it, he’ll likely not have an untimely death. Most important, I’d guess, in managing his loss of balance, is taking measure to prevent injuries from falls. You’ll also want to carefully track his cognitive ability, and compensate as best possible for any trouble with that the meningitis caused.

 

These research findings appear to most promising not in adult medicine, but in understanding and preventing sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). They offer some much-needed explanation of this mysterious syndrome. This is especially valuable to parents and caregivers who’ infants have died of SIDS, because it points to a physical cause of the death, rather than that some action they did or didn’t perform caused the death, though the research supports the link between infants sleeping face down vs face up and SIDS – the inner ear, which allows the brain to distinguish between these two positions, is more likely to trigger SIDS when an infant sleeps face down.

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I had meningitis when I was a teenager and as a result had "profound" hearing loss along with getting my balance centers almost completely zapped. It did not stop me from competing in track (which my daughter did too), or skiing or doing lots of other things involving physical exertion. 

 

Although I've never pursued it, I've been told that the lack of balance would be an advantage if I ever became a pilot because I wouldn't have the tendency to fly by feel and would more likely trust the instruments. I know it actually improved my skiing because I no longer had the tendency to lean back on my skis. 

 

And I've flown over a million miles on airlines without once being bothered by a crying baby or a talkative seat-mate.

 

So, while I've not bothered to read the articles linked, I can speak at least from my own single data point of personal experience (along with stories of others I've met along the way in the same position), that you should not worry too much, and even the "handicaps" that result can actually turn out to be advantages.

 

 

Every cloud has a silver lining, :phones:

Buffy

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I had meningitis when I was a teenager and as a result had "profound" hearing loss along with getting my balance centers almost completely zapped. It did not stop me from competing in track (which my daughter did too), or skiing or doing lots of other things involving physical exertion. 

 

Although I've never pursued it, I've been told that the lack of balance would be an advantage if I ever became a pilot because I wouldn't have the tendency to fly by feel and would more likely trust the instruments. I know it actually improved my skiing because I no longer had the tendency to lean back on my skis. 

 

And I've flown over a million miles on airlines without once being bothered by a crying baby or a talkative seat-mate.

 

So, while I've not bothered to read the articles linked, I can speak at least from my own single data point of personal experience (along with stories of others I've met along the way in the same position), that you should not worry too much, and even the "handicaps" that result can actually turn out to be advantages.

 

 

Every cloud has a silver lining, :phones:

Buffy

 

 

Interesting. The article says how the inner ear is responsible for responding to increased CO2 levels. Do you feel the usual urge to breathe if you hold your breath? 

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Interesting. The article says how the inner ear is responsible for responding to increased CO2 levels. Do you feel the usual urge to breathe if you hold your breath? 

 

Of course I do!  Reading between the lines in the article, the connection to SIDS is just conjecture at this point. Might be connected to inner ear damage, but might not. 

 

In any case my balance center damage is almost total: if this was ALL that kept me breathing I should not be alive several decades later. 

 

I don't swim unless I have to, because it's dangerous when you have no balance center: you have no idea which way is up, your feet aren't on the ground and your vision is distorted, so I don't do that to hold my breath. But I do use the hold your breath technique to fight off hiccups frequently and I can tell you I can't hold my breath for any longer than your average person. I run regularly and I definitely get "out of breath" after a sprint up a hill, but I often wish I didn't! :cheer:

 

I really can't see anything out there that says that people with inner ear damage (and there are LOTS of ways that happens, so a lot of data points to go on) are especially at risk from any kind of breathing problems, so if there's any risk at all, it's probably so low you're better off worrying about avoiding being in a car accident or maybe even being hit by lightning. 

 

 

Just because you're breathing, doesn't mean you're alive, :phones:

Buffy

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Interesting.

 

The article in question noted that infant mice whose inner ears had been damaged/destroyed did not respond to an increase in CO2 compared to mice whose inner ears were left intact. Whether this is only relevant to infants, I wasn't sure, which is why I asked.

 

 

Thoughts?

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The article in question noted that infant mice whose inner ears had been damaged/destroyed did not respond to an increase in CO2 compared to mice whose inner ears were left intact. Whether this is only relevant to infants, I wasn't sure, which is why I asked.

Rubens’ paper hasn’t been published yet, so I’m only able to read articles like the ScienceFair one, but what I get from that is that the experiment involves raising the atmospheric CO2 levels while monitoring the breathing rate of the infant mice that had had and hadn’t had their inner ears damaged. The undamaged mice had increased breathing rates withing 10 seconds, while the damaged ones had less or no increase.

 

Though without a detailed description of the experiment we can only guess, my guess is that the CO2 increase in the experiment is much lower than the increase that forces us to try to breath when we hold our breath for a long time or have our airway blocked.

 

This suggests a link between inner ear damage and breathing disorders like SIDS, but didn’t actually show an infant rat dying from such a disorder.

 

The focus of this work is finding a way to prevent SIDS, not adult breathing disorders. I wouldn’t take it as indicating anything significant about adult breathing disorders.

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The article does mention CO2 receptors in the inner ear however.

 

The article said the inner ear contain chemoreceptors and the mice whose inner ear was damaged did not have any response or reflex to CO2.

I think you’re misreading these pages, Lisa.

 

The Oxford Medicine Online textbook chapter summary page mentions “vestibular receptors”, which are mechanical receptors that detect motion of the tiny fibers – cilia – in the inner ear, allowing us to sense motion and vertical orientation.

 

To the best of my knowledge (and, I think, physiological science, as I don’t think the precise neurological mechanism is well understood) human and other mammal’s respiratory systems don’t have receptors that directly detect CO2. Instead, receptors in the medulla (the base of the brainstem) are sensitive to pH (the concentration of H+ ions) in cerebrospinal fluid. CO2 in blood forms H2CO3, which, unlike H+, can pass the blood-brain barrier into the cerebrospinal fluid, were it the forms HCO3 + H+. I don’t know of a good online textbook explanation of this, but the Wikipedia article “central chemoreceptors” has a summary and a couple of links.

 

Damage or even complete destruction of the inner ear won’t disrupt this brain-based primary CO2-sensing system. What researchers like Rubens are hypothesizing is that the inner ear-based vestibular system also contributes to the control of respiration, in a more subtle way.

 

Further, perhaps this subtle additional system explains how especially fragile cases such as infants who die of SIDS. If correct, this hypothesis is a great medical breakthrough, since currently the cause of SIDS is mysterious, and believed to be complicated and due to many factors.

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The article stated the vestibular system contains chemoreceptors. These detect CO2. The mice whose inner ears were damaged, did not respond to CO2.

 

This is why I've been asking around the internet for weeks trying to get people who have total loss of their inner ear, (I included my standard to include loss of balance to make sure) to see if they have the urge to breathe when they hold their breath. 

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The article stated the vestibular system contains chemoreceptors.

I’m certain you’ve misread the article you cited, Lisa.

 

Following the links - Inner ear damage linked to breathing difficulty and SIDS in mammals and Vestibular system influences on respiratory muscle activity and cardiovascular functions – and using your browser’s search function to find “recep”, you’ll find only the references to “vestibular receptors” in the second page that I mentioned.

 

If you can, post a citation supporting the claim that the vestibular (inner ear) system contains chemoreceptors, but I’m certain you won’t be able to find such a source on any credible website, because it contradicts well-understood, conventional medical science.

 

The neurophysiology of respiration isn’t completely understood, but the main systems have been well-understood for many decades – it’s changed little since I studied it in the 1970s and ‘80s.

 

This is why I've been asking around the internet for weeks trying to get people who have total loss of their inner ear, (I included my standard to include loss of balance to make sure) to see if they have the urge to breathe when they hold their breath.

Every living human not on artificial life support has the urge to breathe when they hold their breath. If they did not, they would die in their sleep.

 

I think you could find evidence that people without inner ears have the urge to breath from case histories of people who have had their inner ears surgically removed, a rare procedure called labyrinthectomy. You could also reasonably conclude that such a surgical procedure wouldn’t exist if it required that patients spend the rest of their life using artificial respiration.

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So now to find people who've had double labyrinthectomys so I can ask this question. 

 

And it isn't breathing, but a response to CO2. That is why I want to test these people by telling them to hold their breath to see if the reflex to gasp with high blood CO2 levels.

 

Don't take my sentences literally, the article in the OP still says the inner ears help mammals to breathe by helping to detect CO2 levels in air, this is a NEW discovery so of course it may seem strange at first and isn't well known right now. For example in the 1920's people thought the thymus gland controlled people's emotions and had all sorts of powers - now we know it's an area where T cells mature, which must have been surprising to the public who just thought the thymus gland was something entirely different.

Edited by LisaL
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