April was Stress Awareness Month, but we should be continuing to learn about stress and its impact throughout the year.
According to the Mental Health Foundation (2018) 74% of people were found to have been overwhelmed by stress. Stress is how the body feels in response to pressure due to certain situations or life events. A small amount of stress is believed to be beneficial, but it is long term stress which is found to be linked to illnesses. Stress is often associated with high blood pressure and mental health problems, but the association is not often made with hearing loss.
Understanding the science
Stress will release an increased amount of adrenaline/cortisol within our bodies. This increased amount of stress hormones over time can reduce the blood flow reaching our inner ear. Hair cells situated in our cochlea in the inner ear are an important structure when it comes to our hearing. Put simply, these hair cells allow our brain to hear sound. They rely on good blood flow to work effectively, if this blood supply is reduced or stopped this can reduce the efficiency of how the hair cells work. This can lead to a loss of hearing as these hair cells will cease to hear and therefore limit the transfer of sound to the brain.
The impact of chronic stress
Cognitive impairment – the effect of stress hormones on reducing the amount of blood flow to the hair cells – can have an impact on our hearing levels. A decline in our hearing could lead us to having to work harder to hear in social and working situations. Unfortunately that can lead us to isolate and shy away from these situations as our brain is having to work in overdrive, leading us to feel tired and more stressed and beginning a vicious cycle.
Tinnitus is when we hear different sounds within our ears such as ringing, buzzing or whirring which does not come from an external source. Although we don’t know enough about how stress causes tinnitus, we are aware that tinnitus can be a factor of ongoing stress.
How to help our stress levels
To help keep our hearing healthy we need to help ourselves by reducing our stress levels. According to the Mental Health Foundation there are a number of ways we can help to lower our stress levels:
· Meditation
· Healthy Eating
· Regular exercise
· Ask for help and support from health professionals
Please take a look at the Mental Health Foundation website (www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/publications/how-manage-and-reduce-stress) for tips on how to manage our stress levels. A number of suggestions have been sent in by those who have struggled with stress as you can see from their 101 tips that we all manage our stress in different ways.
Regular Hearing Checks
At Workplace Ear Care we want to bring to the forefront the importance of looking after our hearing health. Hearing is usually often only checked once we are aware of a problem. Our hearing can be affected in many ways with stress being just one factor. Let’s help keep our employees healthy and provide them with regular hearing checks. After all, the more we know our bodies, the more we are able to notice when things change.