Q: What is hearing imbalance? What are its causes and the symptoms of the same in the daily activities of a man?

A:The third and the innermost part of the ear maintain balance of the body and are responsible for hearing transmission. This part is heavily connected to brain and other nervous system parts. It is like a machine maintaining balance on both sides of the head and if one machine is having any disease, the balance gets disturbed and we get dizzy attacks, sounds in the ear, called vertigo and tinnitus in medical terms. But both these terms are not diseases, they are just symptoms. The causes can be many but broadly anything that affects the ear, brain, and spine of the neck can affect the balance organs like infections, trauma, tumours, metabolic diseases like diabetes, hypothyroidism, blood vessel and circulatory diseases like stroke, vascular attacks, spasms, migraine, etc. The symptoms are dizziness, sometimes with nausea and even vomiting, sounds in ear, deafness sometimes off and on, heaviness in ears, lack of concentration, irritability, lack of sleep etc. All this can affect work at home and office, and needs attention by an ENT specialist and Neurologist.