Tiredness can have a wide variety of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory problems such as sleep apnea. But there is something more common that can also cause fatigue and that’s hearing loss.
To some extent, 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 are constantly tired for no reason. This can be a frustrating experience. This fatigue can frequently turn into irritability which could cause you to socially seclude yourself. Fortunately, your energy levels will usually improve once you get your hearing loss treated.
Hearing loss moves gradually (and your brain compensates)
Hearing loss is typically a slowly developing condition that gets 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 conspicuous symptoms, like turning the volume on your audio devices way up, can be easy to overlook.
Exhaustion is one of the most noticeable symptoms of hearing loss. In spite of how much rest you get, you could still feel fatigued. Regrettably, many people don’t intuitively link this symptom with hearing loss.
Because the cause occurs in your brain, the symptoms aren’t usually considered an ear issue. Your brain has to work overtime to process sound because of the loss of your ability to hear, which can leave you exhausted. Just as extended periods of intense concentration can leave you fatigued, the extra brain power required to hear what people are saying can be exhausting. Left neglected, this exhaustion can grow worse over time, affecting your quality of life and your ability to complete daily routine activities.
The role of stigma
So why don’t more individuals just go see a hearing specialist when they start feeling tired? One partial reason is that individuals just don’t connect tiredness with hearing loss. But there’s another reason that may inevitably be more damaging: stigma. Individuals often feel like others will think they’re old if they have hearing loss and that acknowledging it will ruin their lives. People will often avoid pursuing treatment because of these false notions.
However, this stigma is starting to fade away as more people become open to their hearing loss. It’s becoming a more common understanding that hearing loss can happen to individuals of all ages and modern hearing aids are small 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 individuals to find the care they need because this often results in hearing loss that gets worse over time when it might not have to.
Treatment options for hearing loss-related fatigue
The earliest phases of hearing loss might not have any noticeable symptoms. That’s why hearing specialists prefer to take a preventative strategy instead of the far more difficult and less effective reactive method. 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 later screenings. Once this baseline is achieved, early intervention is frequently much more effective.
You can minimize hearing loss associated exhaustion by taking a few proactive measures. Some of the simplest and most common measures include the following:
- Give yourself a break in between conversations: Give yourself some quiet time to rest and recharge in between conversations. This can help your brain recover from all the work it’s doing and make day-to-day communication a little more sustainable.
- 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 wearing hearing aids or not). It will be easier, and less tiring, to understand conversations if you move them to a quieter location.
- If you use hearing aids, wear them as frequently as you can: One of the primary functions of hearing aids is to clarify human speech, making understanding conversations a lot easier. This means your brain won’t need to work as hard and you won’t experience the same degree of fatigue.
- Schedule a consultation with a hearing specialist: Keeping an eye on the status of your hearing is essential. When hearing loss is in its early phases, your brain doesn’t need 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.
It’s probably time to schedule an appointment with a hearing specialist if you’re experiencing fatigue with no evident cause. 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 neglected.
