Fatigue can have a wide variety of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory problems like sleep apnea. But many people are surprised to find out that chronic fatigue and exhaustion can also be due to something relatively 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 may feel as if you are constantly tired for no reason. This experience can be very frustrating. Additionally, this exhaustion can frequently lead to irritability and, eventually, social isolation. Fortunately, your energy levels will typically improve once you get your hearing loss treated.
Hearing loss moves gradually (and your brain compensates)
Hearing loss is usually a slowly advancing condition that grows worse over time. In its early phases, you likely won’t even notice that you’re developing hearing loss. Even prevalent symptoms, like turning the volume up on your TV and smartphone, can be easy to miss if you’re not watching 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. Regrettably, many people don’t instinctively link this symptom with hearing loss.
Because the cause occurs in your brain, the symptoms aren’t usually considered an ear issue. 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 prolonged periods of concentration can take a toll. Left neglected, this fatigue can get worse over time, impacting your quality of life and your ability to complete daily routine activities.
The role of stigma
So when people start to feel tired, why wouldn’t they just consult a hearing specialist? 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 damaging. People frequently 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 false, and they prevent many individuals from finding treatment.
However, as more people are open about their hearing loss experience, the stigma has begun to disappear. It’s becoming a more prevalent understanding that hearing loss can happen to people of all ages and today’s hearing aids are small enough that the few people who can’t let go of this stigma won’t even see them.
It’s a shame that this social stigma can make it harder for individuals to find the care they need because this often leads to hearing loss that grows worse over time when it might not need to.
How to manage hearing loss-associated fatigue
The earliest stages of hearing loss might not have any apparent symptoms. That’s why hearing specialists prefer to take 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 a lot more effective.
You can lessen hearing loss associated exhaustion by taking a few proactive measures. A few of the simplest and most common steps include the following:
- Try to find more quiet, secluded spots for conversations: 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 exhausting, to understand conversations if you move them to a quieter spot.
- Consult a hearing specialist: Keeping an eye on the state of your hearing is important. 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.
- 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 considerably easier to understand when you are hearing them. This means you won’t be as tired because your brain won’t need to work so hard.
- Take breaks from conversations: In between conversation, take a quiet break somewhere. This can help your brain recover from all the work it’s doing and make everyday communication a bit more sustainable.
So if you’re experiencing an abnormal amount of exhaustion and tiredness, with no discernible cause, it may be time to schedule 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 concerned about the stigma.