Tiredness can have a variety of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory conditions like sleep apnea. But many people are surprised to learn that persistent tiredness and exhaustion can also be a result of something fairly common: hearing loss.
To some extent, that’s because hearing loss can be a slow-moving, subtle condition. You might not immediately detect the symptoms and, as a result, you might feel as if you’re constantly tired for no reason. This experience can be really frustrating. In addition, this exhaustion can frequently lead to irritability and, eventually, 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 progressing hearing loss
For most individuals, hearing loss is a very slow-moving condition that gets worse over time. You might 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 overlook.
One of the harder to miss symptoms of hearing loss is often fatigue. You might feel depleted no matter how much rest you got the night before. Unfortunately, many people don’t intuitively connect this symptom with hearing loss.
Because the cause happens in your brain, the symptoms aren’t usually 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 prolonged periods of intense concentration can leave you tired, the additional brain power needed to hear what individuals 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 untreated hearing loss grows worse.
Stigma plays a role
So why don’t more individuals just visit a hearing specialist when they begin feeling fatigued? One partial reason is that individuals just don’t connect fatigue with hearing loss. But the notion of stigma is another reason which can be even more detrimental. There’s an impression that hearing loss is terrible or ruins your life or that there’s nothing that can be done about it. Individuals will frequently avoid pursuing treatment because of these false notions.
However, this stigma is beginning to disappear as more people 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 get over this stigma won’t even see them.
Unfortunately, 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.
How to manage hearing loss-associated fatigue
The earliest stages of hearing loss may not have any apparent symptoms. That’s why hearing specialists favor taking a preventative strategy rather than the far more challenging and less effective reactive approach. For example, 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 often much more effective.
You can minimize hearing loss associated exhaustion by taking a few proactive steps. Here are a few of the most prevalent and simplest steps:
- 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 your brain won’t have to work as hard and you won’t experience the same level of fatigue.
- Schedule an assessment with a hearing specialist: It’s important to monitor 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 worsens, and a hearing specialist can identify hearing loss when it first begins to develop.
- Try to find more quiet, secluded spots for conversations: Distinguishing voices from background noise can be challenging when you have hearing loss (often whether you’re wearing hearing aids or not). 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, minimizing fatigue in the process.
- Take breaks from conversations: In between conversation, take a quiet rest somewhere. Your brain is working overtime to engage in conversation and brief breaks will make that more sustainable.
It’s probably time to schedule an appointment with a hearing specialist if you’re experiencing exhaustion with no evident cause. Treating hearing loss can help you lessen your exhaustion and boost your energy. Don’t let stigma cause your hearing loss to continue to be untreated.