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 chronic fatigue and exhaustion can also be a result of something fairly common: hearing loss.
To some extent, that’s because hearing loss can be a slow-moving, subtle condition. You may not immediately recognize the symptoms and, as a result, you might feel as though you’re constantly tired for no reason. This experience can be very frustrating. This fatigue can frequently turn into irritability which could cause you to socially seclude yourself. The good news is that treating your hearing loss will often improve your energy levels, mitigating tiredness and exhaustion.
Hearing loss progresses slowly (and your brain compensates)
Hearing loss is typically a slowly progressing condition that gets 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 aren’t watching for them.
One of the more difficult 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 usually associated with hearing loss.
Because the cause takes place in your brain, the symptoms aren’t generally considered an ear issue. When your ears aren’t getting as much information, your brain works harder to make sense of it all. In the same way as prolonged periods of intense concentration can leave you tired, the additional brain power required to hear what people are saying can be exhausting. Your ability to execute daily tasks and your overall quality of life can be considerably impacted over time as your neglected hearing loss gets worse.
Stigma plays a role
So why don’t more people just consult a hearing specialist when they start feeling tired? One partial reason is that people just don’t connect tiredness with hearing loss. But the perception of stigma is another cause which can be even more detrimental. Individuals often feel as if others will think they’re old if they have hearing loss and that acknowledging it will ruin their lives. People will often avoid seeking treatment because of these false notions.
However, this stigma is starting to fade away as more individuals become open to their hearing loss. It’s becoming a more common understanding that hearing loss can happen to people of all ages and modern hearing aids are discreet enough that the few people who can’t let go of this stigma won’t even notice them.
It’s unfortunate that this social stigma can make it more difficult for people to find the care they need because this often results in hearing loss that grows worse over time when it might not have to.
How to manage hearing loss-associated fatigue
There are frequently no apparent symptoms of early stage hearing loss. That’s why hearing specialists favor taking a preventative strategy instead of the far more challenging and less effective reactive approach. Hearing specialists advocate for routine screenings in order to create a baseline of your healthy hearing, that way they will be able to identify changes to your hearing in subsequent screenings. Early treatment will be much more effective once we have determined that baseline.
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 several of the most prevalent and easiest steps:
- See a hearing specialist: Keeping an eye on the status of your hearing is important. Visiting a hearing specialist can help you identify hearing loss in its early stages when it’s less of an issue and your brain doesn’t have to work as hard to compensate.
- Be sure you wear your hearing aids as frequently as you can: Hearing aids are manufactured 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 fatigued because your brain won’t need to work so hard.
- Take breaks from conversations: Give yourself some quiet time to rest and refresh in between conversations. Your brain is working overtime to engage in conversation and brief rests will make that more sustainable.
- Try to have conversations in quieter areas: Sorting out voices from background noise can be challenging when you have hearing loss (often whether you’re using hearing aids or not). It will be easier, and less fatiguing, to understand conversations if you move them to a quieter area.
So if you’re feeling an unusual amount of exhaustion and tiredness, with no apparent cause, it may be time to plan a visit to your hearing specialist. Treating hearing loss can help you reduce your exhaustion and boost your energy. Don’t let stigma cause your hearing loss to continue to be untreated.