Tiredness can have a wide variety of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory problems such as sleep apnea. But many people are surprised to learn that persistent fatigue and exhaustion can also be caused by something fairly common: hearing loss.
That’s at least partially due to the fact that hearing loss usually progresses gradually over time. You may not immediately detect the symptoms and, as a result, you may feel as if you’re constantly tired for no reason. This experience can be really frustrating. This fatigue can frequently turn into irritability which could cause you to socially seclude yourself. The good news is that treating your hearing loss will frequently boost your energy levels, mitigating fatigue and exhaustion.
Your brain will compensate for slowly developing hearing loss
For most individuals, hearing loss is a very gradually-progressing condition that grows worse over time. You may not even recognize that you have a hearing impairment at first. If you’re not specifically watching for them, even conspicuous symptoms, like cranking the volume on your audio devices way up, can be easy to overlook.
One of the more difficult to miss symptoms of hearing loss is often fatigue. You might feel tired no matter how much rest you got the night before. Unfortunately, many people don’t instinctively connect this symptom with hearing loss.
That’s because the cause happens in your brain. Your brain has to work overtime to process sound because of the loss of your ability to hear, which can leave you fatigued. This continual extra work is taxing in the same way that extended periods of concentration can take a toll. Left neglected, this exhaustion can get worse over time, impacting your quality of life and your ability to execute daily routine activities.
Stigma plays a role
So when people begin to feel fatigue, why wouldn’t they just go see a hearing specialist? One partial reason is that people just don’t associate tiredness with hearing loss. But there’s another reason that might ultimately be more detrimental: stigma. There’s an impression that hearing loss is bad or ruins your life or that there’s nothing you can do about it. People will often avoid pursuing treatment because of these false ideas.
However, this stigma is beginning to fade away as more individuals become open to their hearing loss. It’s becoming a more common understanding that hearing loss can happen to individuals of all ages and today’s hearing aids are small enough that the few people who can’t get over this stigma won’t even see them.
Regrettably, this perception of social stigma can cause people in the early stages of hearing loss to put off on getting the treatment they need leading to more severe permanent hearing loss.
How to deal with hearing loss-associated fatigue
There are frequently no noticeable symptoms of early stage hearing loss. That’s why hearing specialists favor taking a preventative strategy instead of the far more difficult and less effective reactive method. For example, scheduling regular screenings with a hearing specialist before you detect symptoms can help establish a baseline of what your healthy hearing looks like. Early treatment will be much more effective after we have determined that baseline.
You can lessen hearing loss related exhaustion by taking a few proactive measures. Here are several of the most prevalent and simplest steps:
- Try to find more quiet, secluded spots for conversations: Distinguishing voices from background noise can be difficult when you have hearing loss (often whether you’re wearing hearing aids or not). It will be easier, and less exhausting, to understand conversations if you move them to a quieter place.
- If you use hearing aids, wear them as often as you can: Hearing aids are designed to help you focus on the sounds of human speech, meaning conversation will be substantially easier to make out when you are hearing them. This means you won’t be as fatigued because your brain won’t have to work so hard.
- Take breaks from conversations: Give yourself some quiet time to rest and refresh in between conversations. Your brain is working overtime to participate in conversation and brief rests will make that more sustainable.
- Schedule an assessment with a hearing specialist: It’s important to monitor your hearing health. When hearing loss is in its early phases, your brain doesn’t have to work as hard as it does when the condition worsens, and a hearing specialist can diagnose hearing loss when it first begins to develop.
So if you’re feeling an abnormal amount of exhaustion and tiredness, with no discernible cause, it might be time to schedule a visit to your hearing specialist. You can reduce your fatigue and boost your energy by treating your hearing loss. Don’t let stigma cause your hearing loss to continue to be neglected.