Fatigue can have a wide range of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory conditions such as sleep apnea. But there is something more common that can also be the cause of fatigue and that’s hearing loss.
That’s at least partly due to the fact that hearing loss normally develops 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 really frustrating. This exhaustion can often turn into irritability which could cause you to socially isolate yourself. The good news is that treating your hearing loss will frequently improve your energy levels, mitigating tiredness and exhaustion.
Hearing loss moves slowly (and your brain compensates)
Hearing loss is normally a gradually progressing condition that gets worse over time. You might not even recognize that you have a hearing impairment at first. Even common 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 harder to miss symptoms of hearing loss is often exhaustion. No matter how much rest you get, you could still feel fatigued. This symptom, regrettably, isn’t typically associated with hearing loss.
Because the cause happens 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 fatigued, the extra brain power required to hear what people are saying can be exhausting. Left neglected, this fatigue can get worse over time, affecting your quality of life and your ability to complete daily routine activities.
Stigma plays a role
So when individuals start to feel fatigue, why wouldn’t they just visit a hearing specialist? One partial explanation is that people just don’t connect fatigue with hearing loss. But the notion of stigma is another reason which can be even more damaging. Individuals frequently feel like others will think they’re old if they have hearing loss and that admitting it will ruin their lives. Individuals will frequently avoid seeking treatment because of these false notions.
However, as more individuals are open about their hearing loss experience, the stigma has started to fade. It’s becoming a more common understanding that hearing loss can happen to people of all ages and today’s hearing aids are discreet enough that the few people who can’t get over this stigma won’t even see them.
It’s a shame that this social stigma can make it more difficult for individuals to find the care they need because this frequently leads to hearing loss that grows worse over time when it may not need to.
Treatment options for hearing loss-related fatigue
There are frequently no noticeable symptoms of early stage hearing loss. That’s why hearing specialists prefer to take a preventative strategy instead of the far more challenging and less effective reactive approach. Hearing specialists advocate for regular screenings in order to establish a baseline of your healthy hearing, that way they will be capable of identifying changes to your hearing in subsequent screenings. Early treatment will be much more effective after we have determined that baseline.
You can minimize hearing loss associated exhaustion by taking a few proactive steps. A few of the easiest and most common steps include the following:
- 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.
- If you have hearing aids, wear them as frequently 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 you won’t be as fatigued because your brain won’t need to work so hard.
- Try to find more quiet, isolated places for conversations: When there is a lot of background noise, it can be difficult to sort out voices, even with hearing aids in some circumstances. It will be easier, and less fatiguing, to understand conversations if you move them to a quieter area.
- Consult a hearing specialist: It’s important to monitor your hearing health. Visiting a hearing specialist can help you identify 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 probably time to schedule an appointment with a hearing specialist if you’re experiencing fatigue with no evident 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.