Fatigue can have a wide range of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory conditions like sleep apnea. But many individuals are surprised to learn that chronic fatigue and exhaustion can also be a result of something relatively common: hearing loss.
That’s at least partially because of the fact that hearing loss normally progresses slowly over time. You may not immediately distinguish the symptoms and, as a result, you may feel as if you’re constantly tired for no reason. This experience can be quite frustrating. Additionally, this exhaustion can frequently lead to irritability and, eventually, social isolation. The good news is that treating your hearing loss will often improve your energy levels, reducing fatigue and exhaustion.
Your brain will compensate for gradually progressing hearing loss
Hearing loss is typically a gradually advancing condition that gets worse over time. You might not even recognize that you have a hearing loss at first. Even prevalent symptoms, like turning the volume up on your TV and smartphone, can be easy to miss if you aren’t looking for them.
One of the harder 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 occurs in your brain, the symptoms aren’t generally considered an ear problem. Your brain needs 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 worn out, the extra brain power needed to hear what people are saying can be exhausting. Left untreated, this exhaustion can grow worse over time, impacting your quality of life and your ability to perform daily routine activities.
Stigma plays a role
So why don’t more individuals just go see a hearing specialist when they begin feeling fatigued? One partial explanation is that people just don’t connect fatigue with hearing loss. But there’s another reason that may ultimately be more damaging: 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 prevent many individuals from seeking treatment.
However, as more individuals are open about their hearing loss experience, the stigma has begun to fade. Many people understand that hearing loss is not some kind of social failing, and the very small construction of modern hearing aids makes them easy to hide around people who sadly will not get over this stigma.
Unfortunately, this perception of social stigma can cause individuals in the early stages of hearing loss to avoid getting the treatment they need leading to more serious permanent hearing loss.
Solutions for hearing loss-related fatigue
There are frequently no apparent symptoms of early phase hearing loss. That’s why hearing specialists favor taking a preventative strategy instead of the far more challenging and less effective reactive method. For instance, scheduling routine screenings with a hearing specialist before you notice symptoms can help establish 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 related exhaustion by taking a few proactive steps. A few of the simplest and most common measures include the following:
- Be certain you use your hearing aids as frequently as you can: Hearing aids are designed 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 tired because your brain won’t have to work so hard.
- Consult a hearing specialist: Keeping an eye on the status of your hearing is important. When hearing loss is in its early phases, your brain doesn’t have 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.
- 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 bit more sustainable.
- Try to find more quiet, isolated areas for conversations: Sorting out 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 trying to hear, minimizing fatigue in the process.
So if you’re feeling an unusual amount of fatigue and tiredness, with no evident cause, it might be time to plan a visit to your hearing specialist. You can lessen your fatigue and boost your energy by treating your hearing loss. Don’t neglect your hearing loss because you’re afraid of the stigma.