There are numerous possible causes of exhaustion, everything from being unable to sleep at night to respiratory problems like sleep apnea. But many people are surprised to find out that persistent fatigue and exhaustion can also be due to something relatively common: hearing loss.
That’s at least partially because of the fact that hearing loss usually progresses slowly over time. You may not immediately detect the symptoms and, as a result, you may feel as if you’re constantly tired for no reason. This experience can be quite frustrating. This fatigue can often turn into irritability which could cause you to socially seclude yourself. The good news is that treating your hearing loss will frequently improve your energy levels, mitigating fatigue and exhaustion.
Your brain will compensate for gradually developing hearing loss
Hearing loss is typically a slowly advancing condition that gets worse over time. In its early stages, you likely won’t even detect that you’re developing hearing loss. Even prevalent symptoms, like turning up the volume on your TV and smartphone, can be easy to miss if you’re not watching for them.
Fatigue is one of the most noticeable symptoms of hearing loss. In spite of how much sleep you get, you could still feel exhausted. Unfortunately, many individuals don’t instinctively link this symptom with hearing loss.
That’s because the cause happens in your brain. When your ears aren’t getting as much information, your brain works harder to comprehend it all. This constant extra work is taxing in the same way that long periods of concentration can take a toll. Left neglected, this exhaustion can get worse over time, impacting your quality of life and your ability to execute daily routine tasks.
Stigma plays a role
So why don’t more individuals just consult a hearing specialist when they start feeling tired? One partial reason is that people just don’t associate tiredness with hearing loss. But there’s another reason that might ultimately be more detrimental: stigma. There’s an impression 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 people from seeking treatment.
However, this stigma is starting to fade away as more individuals become open to their hearing loss. Many people understand that hearing loss is not some type of social failing, and the very small construction of modern hearing aids makes them easy to hide around folks who unfortunately will not let go of this stigma.
It’s unfortunate that this social stigma can make it harder for people to find the care they need because this often leads to hearing loss that grows worse over time when it may not have to.
How to manage hearing loss-associated fatigue
The earliest phases of hearing loss might not have any apparent symptoms. That’s why hearing specialists favor taking a preventative strategy 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 capable of identifying changes to your hearing in subsequent screenings. Once this baseline is established, early intervention is often much more effective.
If your hearing loss is causing fatigue, there are some steps you can take to minimize that exhaustion as much as possible. Here are a few of the most common and easiest steps:
- Schedule a consultation with a hearing specialist: It’s important to monitor your hearing health. Seeing a hearing specialist can help you detect hearing loss in its early stages when it’s less of a problem and your brain doesn’t need to work as hard to compensate.
- 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 bit more sustainable.
- Try to have conversations in quieter places: 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 tiring, to understand conversations if you move them to a quieter location.
- Make sure you wear your hearing aids as often as you can: 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 your brain won’t have to work as hard and you won’t experience the same degree of fatigue.
So if you’re experiencing an unusual amount of fatigue and tiredness, with no discernible cause, it might be time to schedule a visit to your hearing specialist. Treating hearing loss can help you minimize your exhaustion and boost your energy. Don’t let stigma cause your hearing loss to continue to be neglected.