There are two forms of anxiety. There’s common anxiety, that feeling you get when you’re coping with a crisis. Some individuals feel anxiety even when there aren’t any distinct events or worries to link it to. Regardless of what’s going on in their lives or what’s on their mind, they frequently feel anxiety. It’s just there in the background all through the day. This kind of anxiety is usually more of a mental health issue than a neurological response.
Both types of anxiety can be very detrimental to the physical body. Extended periods of persistent anxiety can be especially negative. Your alert status is raised by all of the chemicals that are secreted when anxiety is experienced. It’s good in the short term, but harmful over a long period of time. Certain physical symptoms will begin to appear if anxiety can’t be treated and persists for longer periods of time.
Anxiety Has Distinct Bodily Symptoms
Symptoms of anxiety often consist of:
- Nausea
- Bodily discomfort
- Melancholy and loss of interest in activities or daily life
- A feeling that something dreadful is about to happen
- Feeling like you’re coming out of your skin
- Exhaustion
- A thumping heart or shortness of breath commonly linked to panic attacks
But chronic anxiety doesn’t necessarily manifest in the ways that you may anticipate. Anxiety can even effect vague body functions such as your hearing. For instance, anxiety has been associated with:
- High Blood Pressure: And some of the effects of anxiety are not at all surprising. Elevated blood pressure is one of those. Known scientifically as hypertension, high blood pressure can have all kinds of negative secondary effects on your body. It’s certainly not good. High blood pressure has also been known to lead to hearing loss, tinnitus and dizziness.
- Tinnitus: You probably know that stress can make the ringing your ears worse, but did you realize that there is evidence that it can also cause the ringing in your ears to develop over time. This is called tinnitus (which, itself can have any number of other causes as well). For a few, this may even manifest itself as a feeling of blockage or clogging of the ears.
- Dizziness: Persistent anxiety can sometimes cause dizziness, which is an issue that may also stem from the ears. After all, the ears are generally responsible for your sense of balance (there are these three tubes in your inner ears that are controlling the sense of balance).
Hearing Loss And Anxiety
Generally on a hearing blog like this we would tend to concentrate on, well, hearing. And how well you hear. Keeping that in mind, you’ll excuse us if we spend a little bit of time talking about how hearing loss and anxiety can influence one another in some relatively disconcerting ways.
The solitude is the primary concern. People tend to pull away from social activities when they have hearing loss, tinnitus or balance troubles. You might have seen this in your own family members. Maybe a relative just withdrew from conversations because they were embarrassed that they have to constantly repeat what they said. The same goes for balance issues. It may affect your ability to walk or drive, which can be humiliating to admit to friends and family.
There are also other reasons why anxiety and depression can lead to social isolation. When you do not feel like yourself, you don’t want to be with other people. Sadly, one can wind up feeding the other and can turn into an unhealthy loop. The negative impact of isolation can happen rapidly and will bring about various other issues and can even result in mental decline. It can be even harder to fight the effects of isolation if you’re dealing with hearing loss and anxiety.
Getting The Proper Treatment
Hearing loss, tinnitus, anxiety, and isolation can all feed each other. That’s why finding the correct treatment is so crucial.
If tinnitus and hearing loss are symptoms you’re dealing with, getting correct treatment for them can also help with your other symptoms. Connecting with others has been demonstrated to help alleviate both anxiety and depression. Prolonged anxiety is more severe when there is a strong sense of solitude and dealing with the symptoms can be helpful with that. Consult your general practitioner and audiologist to look at your possibilities for treatment. Hearing aids may be the best choice as part of your treatment depending on the results of your hearing exam. The right treatment for anxiety may involve medication or therapy. Cognitive-behavioral therapy has also been proven to help manage tinnitus.
Here’s to Your Health
We recognize that your mental and physical health can be seriously impacted by anxiety.
Isolation and cognitive decline have also been shown as a repercussion of hearing loss. Coupled with anxiety, that’s a recipe for, well, a difficult time. Fortunately, a favorable difference can be achieved by getting the correct treatment for both conditions. Anxiety doesn’t have to have long-lasting effects on your body and the impact of anxiety on your body can be reversed. The key is finding treatment as soon as possible.
