Fatigue can have a wide range of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory problems like sleep apnea. But there is something more common that can also cause tiredness and that’s hearing loss.
That’s at least partly because of the fact that hearing loss usually develops slowly over time. You may not immediately recognize the symptoms and, as a result, you may feel as though you are constantly tired for no reason. This can be a frustrating experience. This exhaustion can often turn into irritability which could cause you to socially seclude yourself. The good news is that treating your hearing loss will often improve your energy levels, mitigating tiredness and exhaustion.
Hearing loss moves gradually (and your brain compensates)
Hearing loss is typically a slowly advancing condition that grows worse over time. You may not even recognize that you have a hearing loss at first. Even prevalent symptoms, like cranking the volume up on your TV and smartphone, can be easy to miss if you aren’t watching for them.
Exhaustion is one of the most obvious symptoms of hearing loss. You may feel depleted no matter how much sleep you got the night before. This symptom, unfortunately, isn’t usually associated with hearing loss.
Because the cause occurs in your brain, the symptoms aren’t generally considered an ear issue. Your brain has to work overtime to process sound due to the loss of your ability to hear, which can leave you fatigued. In the same way as sustained periods of intense concentration can leave you fatigued, the additional brain power needed to hear what people are saying can be exhausting. Left neglected, this fatigue can get worse over time, affecting your quality of life and your ability to execute daily routine activities.
The role of stigma
So why don’t more individuals just go see a hearing specialist when they begin feeling tired? There are several explanations: often individuals are busy or thinking about other things. But there’s another reason that may ultimately be more detrimental: stigma. People often feel like others will think they’re old if they have hearing loss and that acknowledging it will ruin their lives. People will frequently avoid pursuing treatment because of these mistaken ideas.
However, as more individuals are open about their hearing loss experience, the stigma has started to disappear. Many individuals understand that hearing loss is not some kind of social failing, and the very small nature of modern hearing aids makes them easy to hide around people who sadly will not get over this stigma.
It’s unfortunate that this social stigma can make it harder for individuals to find the care they need because this frequently leads to hearing loss that gets worse over time when it might not need to.
How to manage hearing loss-associated fatigue
The earliest phases of hearing loss may not have any noticeable symptoms. That’s why hearing specialists prefer to take a preventative strategy instead of the far more difficult and less effective reactive method. Hearing specialists advocate for regular screenings in order to create a baseline of your healthy hearing, that way they will be able to identify changes to your hearing in later screenings. Early treatment will be a lot more effective once we have identified that baseline.
If your hearing loss is causing fatigue, there are some steps you can take to lessen that exhaustion as much as possible. Here are a few of the most common and easiest steps:
- Try to find more quiet, secluded areas for conversations: When there is a lot of background noise, it can be challenging to sort out voices, even with hearing aids in some instances. It will be easier, and less fatiguing, to understand conversations if you move them to a quieter area.
- Schedule a consultation with a hearing specialist: Keeping an eye on the state of your hearing is essential. Visiting a hearing specialist can help you identify hearing loss in its early stages when it’s less of an issue and your brain doesn’t need to work as hard to compensate.
- Be sure you use your hearing aids as often as you can: Hearing aids are designed to help you focus on the sounds of human speech, meaning conversation will be significantly easier to understand when you are hearing them. This means your brain won’t need to work as hard and you won’t experience the same level of fatigue.
- Give yourself a break in between conversations: In between conversation, take a quiet rest somewhere. This can help your brain recover from all the work it’s doing and make everyday communication a bit more sustainable.
So if you’re feeling an unusual amount of exhaustion and tiredness, with no apparent cause, it may be time to schedule a visit to your hearing specialist. You can minimize your fatigue and boost your energy by treating your hearing loss. Don’t let stigma cause your hearing loss to continue to be neglected.