Tiredness can have a wide range of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory conditions like sleep apnea. But there is something more common that can also cause fatigue and that’s hearing loss.
That’s at least partially due to the fact that hearing loss normally develops gradually over time. You may not immediately recognize the symptoms and, as a result, you might feel as if you are constantly tired for no reason. This can be a frustrating experience. In addition, this exhaustion can often result in irritability and, eventually, social isolation. Luckily, your energy levels will typically increase once you get your hearing loss treated.
Your brain will compensate for gradually progressing hearing loss
Hearing loss is normally a gradually progressing condition that gets worse over time. In its early stages, you likely won’t even detect that you’re developing hearing loss. If you aren’t specifically watching for them, even conspicuous symptoms, like cranking the volume on your audio devices way up, can be easy to miss.
Fatigue is one of the most noticeable symptoms of hearing loss. No matter how much sleep you get, you could still feel fatigued. Unfortunately, many people don’t instinctively associate this symptom with hearing loss.
That’s because the cause occurs in your brain. When your ears aren’t receiving as much information, your brain works overtime to make sense of it all. In the same way as prolonged periods of intense concentration can leave you worn out, the additional brain power required to hear what people are saying can be exhausting. Your ability to perform daily tasks and your total quality of life can be significantly impacted over time as your neglected hearing loss gets worse.
The role of stigma
So when individuals start to feel fatigue, why wouldn’t they simply consult a hearing specialist? One partial explanation is that individuals just don’t associate fatigue with hearing loss. But the notion of stigma is another cause which can be even more detrimental. People often feel like others will think they’re old if they have hearing loss and that admitting it will ruin their lives. All of these things are false, and they stop many people from finding treatment.
However, this stigma is starting to disappear as more people become open to their hearing loss. Many people understand that hearing loss is not some type of social failing, and the very small nature of modern hearing aids makes them easy to hide around folks who sadly will not get over this stigma.
Unfortunately, this perception of social stigma can cause individuals in the early stages of hearing loss to avoid getting the treatment they need leading to more serious permanent hearing loss.
Solutions for hearing loss-related fatigue
There are often no noticeable symptoms of early stage hearing loss. That’s why hearing specialists prefer to take a preventative strategy rather than the far more difficult and less effective reactive method. Hearing specialists advocate for routine screenings in order to establish a baseline of your healthy hearing, that way they will be capable of identifying changes to your hearing in subsequent screenings. Early treatment will be much more effective once we have identified that baseline.
If your hearing loss is causing fatigue, there are some steps you can take to minimize that exhaustion as much as possible. Some of the easiest and most common measures include the following:
- Take breaks from conversations: Give yourself some quiet time to rest and recharge in between conversations. This can help your brain recuperate from all the work it’s doing and make day-to-day communication a little more sustainable.
- Try to have conversations in quieter areas: When there is a lot of background noise, it can be difficult to sort out voices, even with hearing aids in some circumstances. Moving conversations to an area with less background noise can make it easier for your brain to focus on the voice you’re attempting to hear, reducing fatigue in the process.
- If you use hearing aids, wear them as often as possible: Hearing aids are designed to help you focus on the sounds of human speech, meaning conversation will be considerably easier to make out when you are hearing them. This means your brain won’t have to work as hard and you will not experience the same amount of fatigue.
- Consult a hearing specialist: Keeping an eye on the state of your hearing is essential. When hearing loss is in its early phases, your brain doesn’t have to work as hard as it does when the condition gets worse, and a hearing specialist can identify hearing loss when it first begins to develop.
So if you’re feeling an unusual amount of exhaustion and tiredness, with no evident cause, it may be time to schedule a visit to your hearing specialist. You can lessen your fatigue and boost your energy by treating your hearing loss. Don’t let stigma cause your hearing loss to continue to be untreated.