There are two kinds of anxiety. When you are involved with a crisis, that feeling that you have is called common anxiety. And then you can have the kind of anxiety that isn’t actually attached to any one worry or event. No matter what’s going on around them or what’s on their mind, they often feel anxiety. It’s more of a generalized sensation that seems to pervade the day. This kind of anxiety is usually more of a mental health concern than a neurological reaction.
Regrettably, both kinds of anxiety are pretty terrible for the human body. It can be particularly harmful if you have prolonged or chronic anxiety. When it feels anxiety, your body releases all sorts of chemicals that raise your alert status. It’s good in the short term, but harmful over extended periods of time. Over time, anxiety that cannot be treated or brought under control will start to manifest in certain physical symptoms.
Anxiety Has Distinct Physical Symptoms
Some symptoms of anxiety are:
- A feeling that something dreadful is about to happen
- General pain or soreness in your body
- A racing heart or shortness of breath often linked to panic attacks
- Feeling as if you are coming out of your skin
- Loss of interest and depression
- Tiredness
- Nausea
But sometimes, anxiety is experienced in unexpected ways. Indeed, there are some fairly interesting ways that anxiety might actually wind up affecting things as seemingly obscure as your hearing. As an example, anxiety has been connected with:
- High Blood Pressure: And then there are certain ways that anxiety impacts your body in precisely the way you’d expect it to. Elevated blood pressure is one of those. Known scientifically as hypertension, high blood pressure can have really adverse effects on the body. It is, to make use of a colloquialism, bad news. Dizziness, hearing loss and tinnitus can also be triggered by high blood pressure.
- Tinnitus: You probably understand that stress can cause the ringing in your ears to get worse, but did you know that there’s evidence that it can also cause the ringing in your ears to develop over time. This is known as tinnitus (which, itself can have numerous other causes as well). For a few, this might even manifest itself as a feeling that the ears are blocked or clogged.
- Dizziness: Chronic anxiety can occasionally cause dizziness, which is an issue that may also be related to the ears. After all, the ears are generally responsible for your sense of balance (there are these three tubes in your inner ears which are controlling the sense of balance).
Hearing Loss And Anxiety
Since this is a hearing website, we typically tend to concentrate on, well, hearing. And your ability to hear. So let’s talk a little about how your hearing is impacted by anxiety.
The solitude is the primary concern. When somebody suffers from tinnitus, hearing loss or even balance issues, they often withdraw from social interactions. You may have seen this in your own family. Maybe a relative just withdrew from conversations because they were embarrassed by having to constantly repeat themselves. Issues with balance present similar troubles. It may impact your ability to walk or drive, which can be humiliating to admit to family and friends.
Social isolation is also linked to anxiety and depression for other reasons. Typically, you’re not going to be around anyone if you’re not feeling like yourself. Sadly, one can wind up feeding the other and can turn into an unhealthy loop. That feeling of isolation can set in quickly and it can lead to a variety of other, closely associated issues, such as cognitive decline. For somebody who struggles with anxiety and hearing loss, fighting against that move toward isolation can be even more difficult.
Figuring Out How to Effectively Manage Your Hearing Loss Issues
Hearing Loss, Tinnitus, anxiety and isolation can all feed on each other. That’s why finding the best treatment is so important.
All of the symptoms for these disorders can be assisted by obtaining treatment for your tinnitus and hearing loss. Connecting with other people has been demonstrated to help alleviate both anxiety and depression. Certainly, managing these symptoms can help with the sense of solitude that might make chronic anxiety more extreme. Seek advice from your general practitioner and hearing specialist to explore your choices for treatment. Hearing aids might be the best option as part of your treatment depending on what your hearing test reveals. The most appropriate treatment for anxiety might include therapy or medication. Cognitive-behavioral therapy has also been demonstrated to help deal with tinnitus.
Here’s to Your Health
We recognize that your mental and physical health can be seriously affected by anxiety.
Isolation and cognitive decline have also been recognized as a repercussion of hearing loss. When you add anxiety to the recipe, it makes for a pretty difficult situation. Luckily, we have treatments for both conditions, and getting that treatment can make a big, positive difference. The health impacts of anxiety don’t have to be permanent. What anxiety does to your body does not need to be long lasting. The sooner you find treatment, the better.