If you’ve ever experienced trouble with your hearing you’ve undoubtedly dealt with tinnitus at one point or another. Although the majority of people suffering from this hearing ailment have experienced damage in their inner ear, there is another important cause of tinnitus – stress.
Understanding how stress affects your hearing and how you can begin working towards regaining normal hearing is essential, especially if it’s as a result of stress from the workplace or after being in an accident.
It’s also important to remember that in the event of stress-induced tinnitus, your lawyers can help you to reach a settlement that will cover your pain and suffering as well as medical costs. Below is an important guide to how stress can cause persistent ringing in your ears.
How Tinnitus Affects Your Lifestyle
Approximately 1 in 10 adults in North America and Europe experience tinnitus throughout their lifetime and the severity of the hearing ailment will vary from person to person.
Some people find that they can’t sit in a silent room without their ears ringing whereas others can’t make it through the day without having to worry about the troublesome sound in their inner ear.
Depending on the damage, tinnitus could either be something that is incredibly difficult to live with or manageable.
Understanding Stress
Nearly everyone in the world experiences stress at one point in time or another, whether you have a work project due at the end of the week or if you can’t find the right outfit to wear for an event. The general definition of stress is when the demands put on your shoulders outweigh the resources that you have available to deal with the demands.
This could include your:
- Social Capabilities
- Psychological Capabilities
- Biological Capabilities
The majority of people experience stress when the demands they are faced with are incredibly high, as an example having too many things to do in a short period of time. You might also experience stress in the event that your demands aren’t high enough, such as not having enough to do throughout the day to keep your mind occupied.
One factor that is interesting to consider is that stress isn’t always a bad thing, it can help you to focus on the tasks that you are faced with on a regular basis and keep you motivated.
You will also notice that stress can help you to preserve your safety, such as running away from a situation that could have dire consequences.
“Short-term stress can be beneficial but long-term stress can have a variety of adverse effects such as tinnitus and other healthcare concerns.”
Source: Unsplash
The Signs of Stress
It’s important to remember that every person is different and we all experience stress in different ways.
Some of the most common signs of stress include:
- Tense muscles
- Fast heart rates
- Breathlessness
- Nausea
- Sweating
- An excessive need to relieve your bladder/bowels
- Disrupted sleep
- Ringing in the ears
How Stress Affects Tinnitus
The fact that people have to deal with tinnitus when they are stressed is a vicious cycle. Unfortunately, the more that you think about your hearing issues, the more stressed you’ll become, leading to the tinnitus becoming worse.
It’s quite common for individuals to experience the ringing in their ears as a result of a stressful situation that forces you to focus on the health ailment as well as the demands you are faced with. As a result, the ear ringing becomes worse and worse until it’s relatively unbearable.
You might also notice that tinnitus can be a reason for someone to get stressed, rather than the other way around and the process is as follows.
First, people may put themselves in a quiet environment, which makes them aware of the fact that they have tinnitus and as a result, gives them poor sleep patterns.
The less sleep that you have undoubtedly resulted in a poor mood throughout the day and the inability to cope with difficult situations. It puts your mind in a state where you’re constantly thinking about how you’ll never get to sleep or you simply go through all of the things that you have to do the next day, heightening your stress response.
“The more that you dwell in your thoughts, the more likely you are to experience anxiety and physical arousal such as a racing heart.”
In the event that you are being put in a situation where you’re constantly in an aroused state and your mind is always running through the stressful things that you have to deal with on a regular basis, tinnitus could be an issue that you will deal with.
If you are unwillingly put in these situations and you find that you need a legal professional to help you get out of the stressful situations, you can call Johnson Law Offices today to get the legal help that you need.
