Fatigue can have a variety of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory problems such as sleep apnea. But many individuals are surprised to learn that persistent tiredness and exhaustion can also be caused by something fairly common: hearing loss.
That’s at least partially because of the fact that hearing loss normally develops gradually over time. You might not immediately distinguish the symptoms and, as a result, you may feel as if you are constantly tired for no reason. This experience can be very frustrating. This fatigue can often turn into irritability which could cause you to socially isolate yourself. Fortunately, your energy levels will normally increase once you get your hearing loss treated.
Hearing loss progresses slowly (and your brain compensates)
Hearing loss is typically a gradually developing condition that gets worse over time. You might not even recognize that you have a hearing loss at first. Even prevalent symptoms, like turning up the volume on your TV and smartphone, can be easy to miss if you’re not looking for them.
One of the more difficult to miss symptoms of hearing loss is often fatigue. You may feel tired no matter how much sleep you got the night before. This symptom, regrettably, isn’t usually associated with hearing loss.
That’s because the cause occurs in your brain. When your ears aren’t getting as much information, your brain works harder to comprehend it all. Just as sustained periods of intense concentration can leave you tired, the extra brain power required to hear what individuals are saying can be exhausting. Your ability to perform daily tasks and your overall quality of life can be significantly impacted over time as your untreated hearing loss gets worse.
Stigma plays a role
So why don’t more individuals just go see a hearing specialist when they begin feeling tired? One partial reason is that people just don’t associate fatigue with hearing loss. But the perception of stigma is another cause which can be even more detrimental. 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 people from finding treatment.
However, this stigma is beginning to disappear as more individuals 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.
Regrettably, this perception of social stigma can cause people in the early stages of hearing loss to put off on getting the treatment they need resulting in more severe permanent hearing loss.
How to deal with hearing loss-associated fatigue
There are frequently no apparent symptoms of early phase hearing loss. That makes it challenging to effectively take a reactive strategy, and it’s why many hearing specialists favor preventative approaches. Hearing specialists recommend routine screenings in order to establish 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.
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 a few of the most common and easiest steps:
- Try to locate more quiet, secluded places for conversations: 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 area.
- Be certain you wear 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 considerably easier to make out 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.
- Take breaks from conversations: Give yourself some quiet time to rest and refresh in between conversations. This can help your brain recuperate from all the work it’s doing and make everyday communication a little more sustainable.
- Schedule a consultation with a hearing specialist: It’s important to keep tabs on your hearing health. Consulting 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.
It’s most likely time to make an appointment with a hearing specialist if you’re experiencing fatigue with no apparent 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 untreated.