Tiredness can have a wide range of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory conditions like sleep apnea. But many individuals are surprised to find out that persistent fatigue and exhaustion can also be due to something fairly common: hearing loss.
In part, that’s because hearing loss can be a gradually-moving, subtle condition. You might not immediately recognize the symptoms and, as a result, you may feel as if you’re constantly tired for no reason. This can be a frustrating experience. Additionally, this exhaustion can often result in irritability and, eventually, social isolation. Luckily, your energy levels will typically improve once you get your hearing loss treated.
Hearing loss moves slowly (and your brain compensates)
For the majority of individuals, hearing loss is a very slow-moving condition that grows worse over time. You may not even realize that you have a hearing impairment at first. If you aren’t specifically watching for them, even obvious symptoms, like turning 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 exhaustion. You might 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 happens in your brain, the symptoms aren’t usually considered an ear problem. When your ears aren’t getting as much information, your brain works overtime to comprehend it all. Just as prolonged periods of intense concentration can leave you fatigued, the extra brain power needed to hear what people are saying can be exhausting. 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 individuals begin to feel fatigue, why wouldn’t they just go see a hearing specialist? There are several explanations: frequently people are busy or thinking about other things. But the perception of stigma is another cause which can be even more damaging. People often feel as if others will think they’re old if they have hearing loss and that admitting it will ruin their lives. All of these things are untrue, and they stop many people from finding treatment.
However, as more individuals are open about their hearing loss experience, the stigma has started to disappear. It’s becoming a more prevalent understanding that hearing loss can happen to individuals of all ages and modern hearing aids are discreet enough that the few people who can’t let go of this stigma won’t even notice them.
Regrettably, this perception of social stigma can cause individuals in the early stages of hearing loss to avoid getting the treatment they need resulting in more serious permanent hearing loss.
How to deal with hearing loss-associated fatigue
There are frequently no apparent symptoms of early phase hearing loss. That makes it difficult to effectively take a reactive approach, and it’s why many hearing specialists favor preventative approaches. Hearing specialists recommend regular screenings in order to create 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 a lot more effective after we have identified that baseline.
If your hearing loss is causing fatigue, there are a few steps you can take to lessen that exhaustion as much as possible. Some of the easiest and most common measures include the following:
- Give yourself a rest in between conversations: In between conversation, take a quiet rest somewhere. This can help your brain recuperate from all the work it’s doing and make everyday communication a bit more sustainable.
- Schedule an assessment with a hearing specialist: Keeping an eye on the condition of your hearing is important. Consulting a hearing specialist can help you detect 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.
- Make sure you wear your hearing aids as often as you can: One of the primary functions of hearing aids is to clarify human speech, making understanding conversations much easier. This means you won’t be as fatigued because your brain won’t need to work so hard.
- Try to have conversations in quieter places: Sorting out voices from background noise can be difficult when you have hearing loss (often whether you’re using hearing aids or not). It will be easier, and less fatiguing, to understand conversations if you move them to a quieter area.
So if you’re feeling an abnormal amount of fatigue and tiredness, with no evident 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.