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 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’re constantly tired for no reason. This experience can be very frustrating. This exhaustion can often turn into irritability which could cause you to socially isolate yourself. Luckily, your energy levels will typically increase once you get your hearing loss treated.
Your brain will compensate for slowly developing hearing loss
For the majority of individuals, hearing loss is a very slow-moving condition that grows worse over time. You may not even recognize that you have a hearing loss at first. If you aren’t specifically watching for them, even obvious symptoms, like cranking the volume on your audio devices way up, can be easy to miss.
Fatigue is one of the most obvious symptoms of hearing loss. You may feel tired no matter how much rest you got the night before. This symptom, unfortunately, isn’t typically associated with hearing loss.
That’s because the cause takes place in your brain. When your ears aren’t getting as much information, your brain works harder to make sense of it all. In the same way as extended periods of intense concentration can leave you tired, the extra brain power required 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 consult a hearing specialist when they start feeling fatigued? There are several explanations: often individuals are busy or thinking about other things. But there’s another reason that may inevitably be more detrimental: stigma. People often feel as if others will think they’re old if they have hearing loss and that acknowledging it will ruin their lives. All of these things are untrue, and they stop many individuals from seeking treatment.
However, this stigma is starting to disappear as more individuals become open to their hearing loss. It’s becoming a more common understanding that hearing loss can happen to people 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.
It’s a shame that this social stigma can make it more difficult for people to find the care they need because this often results in hearing loss that grows worse over time when it might not have to.
Solutions for hearing loss-related fatigue
The earliest stages of hearing loss may not have any evident symptoms. That’s why hearing specialists favor taking a preventative approach rather than the far more difficult and less effective reactive approach. Hearing specialists recommend routine screenings in order to create a baseline of your healthy hearing, that way they will be able to identify changes to your hearing in subsequent screenings. Once this baseline is achieved, early intervention is frequently much more effective.
If your hearing loss is causing fatigue, there are a few steps you can take to lessen that exhaustion as much as possible. Here are several of the most prevalent and simplest steps:
- Schedule an assessment with a hearing specialist: Keeping an eye on the state of your hearing is essential. 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.
- Take breaks from conversations: In between conversation, take a quiet rest somewhere. This can help your brain recuperate from all the work it’s doing and make day-to-day communication a little more sustainable.
- 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 significantly easier to understand when you are hearing them. This means you won’t be as fatigued because your brain won’t need to work so hard.
- Try to find more quiet, secluded places for conversations: Distinguishing 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 exhausting, to understand conversations if you move them to a quieter area.
So if you’re dealing with an abnormal amount of exhaustion and tiredness, with no apparent cause, it may be time to plan a visit to your hearing specialist. 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.