Due to our busy lifestyles, many people experience stress frequently, even daily. Constant stress levels have been connected to a number of health issues, such as insomnia, panic attacks, high blood pressure and heart disease, among many others. Stress has also been connected to hearing loss and tinnitus. Let’s explore this connection further.
How Hearing Works
First, let’s review the basics of how hearing works so we can examine how stress affects hearing. Sound waves enter the ear and travel into the inner ear, where they enter a snail shell-shaped organ called the cochlea. The cochlea is filled with fluid, and the interior walls of the cavern are lined with 15,000 tiny hair-like sensory cells, which wave in the fluid. When sound waves enter the cochlea, they cause this fluid to ripple, which in turn ripples the hair cells.
The movement and rubbing of these hair cells in the fluid translates the sound waves into electrical signals, which can then be transmitted to the brain. The brain processes the electrical signals and interprets them as sound, which you then consciously hear.
How Stress Works
Stress is a natural body reaction to an environmental situation, usually a perceived danger. To face this danger, your body releases a hormone called adrenaline, which is meant to give you a burst of energy and/or strength. Adrenaline will cause your heart to beat faster and your breathing to become deeper, allowing richly oxygenated blood to travel quickly throughout your body. Moreover, adrenaline prioritizes sending this blood to your muscles. This increased blood flow will enhance your muscular strength, speed, endurance and focus. It’s due to the influence of adrenaline that you hear stories of parents lifting cars off their toddlers, for example.
Oxygenated Blood and Hearing
Prioritizing sending blood to the muscles has the detrimental effect of diverting it away from other parts of the body. In this discussion, we’re concerned with how the cochlea receives less blood. Those hair-like sensory cells depend on rich blood flow to work properly; without it, they wither away like an unwatered house plant. And if the hair cells aren’t encoding sound waves into electrical signals, that sound information will never reach the brain. This leads to hearing loss and tinnitus.
The Effects of Long-Term Stress
In all likelihood, an hour or so of feeling stressed won’t have a big impact on the health of your hearing; it’s the prolonged stress that causes problems. Also, some other health conditions that are correlated with stress (many listed at the top of this page) can affect hearing in their own ways. High blood pressure (hypertension) and heart disease, for example, are well-known to be linked to hearing loss.
How to Protect Hearing
We know that in our modern world, stress is sometimes hard to avoid. But taking steps to mediate and lessen stress will have a multitude of positive health effects, including on your hearing health. Try stress-relieving coping techniques, such as meditation, taking regular walks outdoors, journaling or speaking with someone to reduce stress in your daily life.
If you ever notice a change in your hearing for any reason, it’s a good idea to speak to a hearing health professional. Call our team of experts at Certified Hearing Aid Consultants to get your questions answered or to schedule an appointment.