Hello friends how are you? Today I want to talk to you about tinnitus, an intruder that can come from different causes: stress and anxiety, hearing problems, etc. In this post I will refer to tinnitus caused by stress.
The increasingly hectic life that our bodies put us through has seen an increase in cases of stress tinnitus. These are ringing and buzzing in the ears caused not by disturbances of the auditory system, but by increased levels of stress and anxiety.
In this post I will tell you what is the link between tinnitus and stress and if there are effective remedies to combat this disorder.
The link between tinnitus and stress
The causes of tinnitus are still not entirely clear: Doctors and researchers around the world are working to fully investigate this disorder. However, in the case of stress tinnitus, the trigger has been identified: the increase in glutamate. Be careful not to confuse it with sodium glutamate used in the food industry, which is precisely a salt that is obtained from it.
Glutamate or glutamic acid is an amino acid produced by the body and has the function of connecting nerve cells to each other, transmitting sensory stimuli in the form of electrical impulses. Under normal conditions, the brain can process these impulses without any problem. On the other hand, when the body is subjected to high levels of stress, glutamate production increases significantly and the brain is not able to process all the data. As a result, some areas can be damaged by this overload, particularly the auditory nerve, and tinnitus is the result of this dysfunction.
How to combat stress tinnitus
Fighting stress tinnitus is not easy even if, unlike "classic" tinnitus, the causes have been identified. In fact, ringing in the ears often causes states of anxiety and stress, insomnia and discomfort in the smallest daily actions. Being able to work, study, chat, or even just relax by reading a book is not easy when there is a constant ringing in your ears.
The stress caused by tinnitus adds to what was the original cause of the tinnitus itself, thus setting off a vicious cycle from which it is difficult to escape.
To combat stress tinnitus, it is necessary to intervene mainly on a psychological level, identifying the origin of the anxiety and learning how to manage it. In fact, if we reduce the stress that we put on our body, the level of glutamate in the blood will return to normal levels and, if the damage to the acoustic nerve is not too severe, the ringing in the ears will disappear on its own. .
However, this is quite a long process, the result of years of professional counseling and therapy. In the meantime, you can try decreasing glutamate production with magnesium and Bach flowers.
Even tinnitus retraining therapy and listening to white noise, which are often used as therapy to combat normal tinnitus, can also be very helpful with stress tinnitus.