Anxiety comes in two varieties. When you are coping with an emergency situation, that feeling that you get is referred to as common anxiety. And then you can have the kind of anxiety that isn’t necessarily linked to any one event or concern. They feel anxious regularly, regardless of what you happen to be doing or thinking about. It’s more of a general feeling that seems to be there all day. This second type is usually the type of anxiety that’s less of a neuro-typical reaction and more of a mental health problem.
Both types of anxiety can be very unfavorable to the physical body. Extended periods of persistent anxiety can be particularly bad. When it’s anxious, your body releases a myriad of chemicals that heighten your alert status. It’s a good thing in the short term, but damaging over extended periods of time. Over the long run, anxiety that can’t be treated or brought under control will begin to manifest in distinct physical symptoms.
Bodily Symptoms of Anxiety
Some symptoms of anxiety are:
- Loss of interest and depression
- Nausea
- General aches or discomfort in your body
- Feeling like something dreadful is about to occur
- Tiredness
- A feeling of being agitated or aggravated
- Panic attacks, difficulty breathing and increased heart rate
But chronic anxiety doesn’t always appear in the ways that you would anticipate. Anxiety can even impact obscure body functions like your hearing. For instance, anxiety has been linked to:
- High Blood Pressure: And some of the effects of anxiety are not at all surprising. In this case, we’re talking about elevated blood pressure. Known medically as hypertension, high blood pressure can have many negative secondary effects on you physically. It’s definitely not good. High blood pressure has also been recognized to lead to hearing loss, tinnitus and dizziness.
- Tinnitus: You probably know that stress can cause the ringing in your ears to get 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 numerous other causes as well). For some, this might even manifest itself as a feeling that the ears are blocked or clogged.
- Dizziness: Dizziness, which can also be caused by the ears, is often a symptom of chronic anxiety. After all, the ears are generally in control of your sense of balance (there are these three tubes in your inner ears that are regulating the sense of balance).
Hearing Loss And Anxiety
Typically on a hearing blog like this we would usually concentrate on, well, hearing. And your how well to 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 each other in some fairly disturbing ways.
First off, there’s the solitude. People tend to withdraw from social experiences when they suffer from 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 by having to constantly repeat what they said. The same is true for balance problems. It can be hard to admit to your friends and family that you have a hard time driving or even walking because you’re experiencing balance problems.
Social isolation is also associated with depression and anxiety for other reasons. Typically, you’re not going to be around people if you aren’t feeling like yourself. Unfortunately, this can be somewhat of a circle where one feeds into the other. The negative effects of isolation can occur rapidly and will result in numerous other problems and can even result in mental decline. For somebody who suffers from anxiety and hearing loss, battling against that move toward isolation can be even more challenging.
Discovering The Right Treatment
Getting the proper treatment is significant especially given how much hearing loss, tinnitus, anxiety and isolation feed on each other.
All of the symptoms for these disorders can be helped by obtaining treatment for your tinnitus and hearing loss. And when it comes to anxiety and depression, interacting with others who can relate can be extremely helpful. Prolonged anxiety is more severe when there is a strong sense of solitude and managing the symptoms can be helpful with that. Talk to your general practitioner and hearing specialist to look at your possibilities for treatment. Hearing aids might be the best solution as part of your treatment depending on what your hearing test reveals. And for anxiety, medication and other forms of therapy could be necessary. Cognitive-behavioral therapy has also been shown to help deal with tinnitus.
Here’s to Your Health
We understand that your mental and physical health can be severely affected by anxiety.
We also realize that hearing loss can lead to isolation and cognitive decline. When you add anxiety to the recipe, it makes for a very difficult situation. Thankfully, treatments exist for both conditions, and obtaining that treatment can make a big, positive difference. Anxiety doesn’t have to have long lasting effects on your body and the impact of anxiety on your body can be counteracted. The key is finding treatment as soon as possible.