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 be the cause of tiredness and that’s hearing loss.
That’s at least partly due to the fact that hearing loss usually progresses gradually over time. You may not immediately distinguish the symptoms and, as a result, you might feel as though you’re constantly tired for no reason. This can be a frustrating experience. In addition, this exhaustion can often result in irritability and, ultimately, social isolation. The good news is that treating your hearing loss will often boost your energy levels, mitigating fatigue and exhaustion.
Your brain will compensate for gradually developing hearing loss
For most people, hearing loss is a very slow-moving condition that grows worse over time. You might not even recognize 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 fatigue. You might feel depleted no matter how much sleep you got the night before. This symptom, regrettably, isn’t typically associated with hearing loss.
Because the cause takes place in your brain, the symptoms aren’t generally considered an ear problem. Your brain has to work overtime to process sound because of the loss of your ability to hear, which can leave you fatigued. In the same way as prolonged periods of intense concentration can leave you fatigued, the extra brain power required to hear what individuals are saying can be exhausting. Left neglected, this exhaustion can get worse over time, impacting your quality of life and your ability to complete daily routine tasks.
Stigma plays a role
So when individuals start to feel tired, why wouldn’t they simply consult a hearing specialist? One partial reason is that individuals just don’t connect fatigue with hearing loss. But there’s another reason that might inevitably be more damaging: stigma. There’s a feeling that hearing loss is terrible or ruins your life or that there’s nothing that can be done about it. All of these things are false, and they prevent many individuals from finding treatment.
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 notice them.
Regrettably, this perception of social stigma can cause people in the early stages of hearing loss to avoid getting the treatment they need resulting in more serious permanent hearing loss.
Treatment options 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 approach instead of the far more difficult and less effective reactive approach. For instance, scheduling regular screenings with a hearing specialist before you detect symptoms can help create a baseline of what your healthy hearing looks like. Once this baseline is achieved, early intervention is frequently much more effective.
If your hearing loss is causing fatigue, there are some steps you can take to lessen 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 everyday communication a bit more sustainable.
- If you use hearing aids, wear them as frequently as possible: Hearing aids are manufactured 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.
- Try to find more quiet, isolated places for conversations: Sorting out voices from background noise can be challenging 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 place.
- See a hearing specialist: It’s important to keep tabs on your hearing health. When hearing loss is in its early stages, your brain doesn’t need to work as hard as it does when the condition gets worse, and a hearing specialist can diagnose hearing loss when it first begins to develop.
It’s probably time to schedule an appointment with a hearing specialist if you’re experiencing exhaustion with no evident cause. You can minimize your fatigue and boost your energy by treating your hearing loss. Don’t neglect your hearing loss because you’re concerned about the stigma.