Hearing Loss, Deafness and Anxiety

Causes

The ear, an organ, comprises a complex system of nerves, muscles, bones, and pressure intricately organized to provide sound and balance information to the brain.

Because of its complexity, diagnosing ear-related problems can be difficult. For example, there can be many causes of this symptom, such as exposure to loud sounds, age, injury to the ear, ear wax buildup, an adverse reaction to medication, high blood pressure, sinus or ear infection, and various other medical causes.

Due to the many causes, it’s best to discuss this symptom with your doctor to rule out a medical cause.

1. Anxiety-Activated Stress Response

Anxious behavior, such as worry, activates the stress response, which secretes stress hormones into the bloodstream, where they travel to specific locations to immediately prepare the body for emergency action – to fight or flee. This instinctual survival reaction is often referred to as the Fight or Flight Response.[1][2][3][4]

Visit the “Stress Response” article for the many ways it can affect the body.

One of the stress response changes affects hearing. For instance, the stress response heightens most of the body’s senses to be more aware of danger. However, not all senses are heightened.

When danger has been detected, the brain works to give us only the information it deems important to survival. Consequently, priority is given to visual information over auditory information, called the McGurk Effect: what you see overrides what you hear.[5][6]

While most senses are on high alert when in danger, hearing is the least important, so it’s somewhat suppressed. This is called “auditory exclusion.” As the degree of the stress response increases, hearing diminishes.

Acute hearing loss is a common symptom of an active stress response.

2. Stress-Response Hyperstimulation

When stress responses occur infrequently, the body recovers relatively quickly from its changes. However, frequently activated stress responses, such as from overly anxious behavior, can prevent the body from completely recovering. Incomplete recovery can leave the body in a state of semi-stress-response-readiness, which we call “stress-response hyperstimulation” since stress hormones are powerful stimulants.

Hyperstimulation is also often referred to as “hyperarousal,” “HPA axis dysfunction,” or “nervous system dysregulation.”[3][4]

Visit our “Hyperstimulation” article for more information about the many ways hyperstimulation can affect the body and how we feel.

Hyperstimulation can cause the changes of an active stress response even though a stress response hasn’t been activated.

Just as an active stress response can cause acute hearing loss symptoms, hyperstimulation can cause chronic hearing loss symptoms.

But that’s not all. Hyperstimulation can cause hearing loss in other ways, too. For instance, hyperstimulation can cause:

• Nervous System Excitation and Dysregulation: A chronically stimulated nervous system can act erratically and cause all kinds of nervous and auditory system symptoms, such as hearing loss.

• Homeostatic Dysregulation: Homeostasis is the body’s ability to automatically maintain a stable internal environment despite changes in the external environment. Hyperstimulation can cause homeostatic dysregulation, leading to internal regulation problems, which can affect the nervous and auditory systems, causing hearing loss in one or both ears.

• Hormone changes: Hormones play a crucial role in homeostasis and many bodily functions. Since stress hormones affect other hormones, hyperstimulation can cause nervous, sensory, and auditory system problems, such as hearing loss.

• Sleep disruption and fatigue: Hyperstimulation can interfere with sleep and tax the body’s energy resources harder and faster than normal. Sleep disruption and fatigue can affect the nervous, sensory, and auditory systems, causing hearing loss.

• Chronically engaged sensory systems: Hyperstimulation can overwork sensory systems, causing all sorts of anomalies that affect one, many, or all our senses and how the brain processes them [7][8], including causing hearing loss.

Since each body is physiologically and chemically unique, hyperstimulation can uniquely affect each person.

For example, one person might experience one or two sensory symptoms due to hyperstimulation, whereas another might experience many.

As long as the body is hyperstimulated, it can exhibit chronic hearing loss symptoms.

I (Jim Folk) had many episodes of hearing loss symptoms, and in many ways when I was struggling with anxiety disorder. Sometimes, one ear was affected, and sometimes both were affected.

I also had a friend who had stress-related hearing loss. Whenever he was under stress, he would lose hearing in one of his ears. Sometimes, the loss was dramatic. One time, he lost complete hearing in one ear. As soon as his stress diminished, his hearing returned to normal.

Anxiety- and hyperstimulation-caused stress is a common cause of acute and chronic hearing loss.

3. Other Factors

Other factors can create stress and cause anxiety-like symptoms, as well as aggravate existing anxiety symptoms, including:

• Medication
• Recreational drugs
• Stimulants
• Sleep deprivation
• Fatigue
• Hyper and hypoventilation
• Low blood sugar
• Nutritional deficiencies
• Dehydration
• Hormone changes
• Pain

Select the relevant link for more information.