Tiredness can have a variety of causes, ranging from a simple sleepless night to respiratory conditions like sleep apnea. But many individuals are surprised to learn that persistent tiredness and exhaustion can also be caused by something fairly common: hearing loss.
In part, that’s because hearing loss can be a gradually-moving, subtle condition. You may not immediately distinguish the symptoms and, as a result, you may feel as though 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 often improve your energy levels, reducing fatigue and exhaustion.
Hearing loss moves slowly (and your brain compensates)
For most individuals, hearing loss is a very slow-moving condition that grows worse over time. In its early phases, you likely won’t even detect that you’re developing hearing loss. If you’re not specifically watching for them, even conspicuous symptoms, like cranking the volume on your audio devices way up, can be easy to overlook.
One of the harder to miss symptoms of hearing loss is often exhaustion. In spite of how much sleep you get, you could still feel fatigued. Unfortunately, many individuals don’t intuitively link this symptom with hearing loss.
That’s because the cause happens in your brain. When your ears aren’t receiving as much information, your brain works harder to comprehend it all. In the same way as sustained periods of intense concentration can leave you fatigued, the additional brain power required to hear what people are saying can be exhausting. Left untreated, this exhaustion can get worse over time, impacting your quality of life and your ability to complete daily routine activities.
Stigma plays a role
So when individuals start to feel tired, why wouldn’t they just visit a hearing specialist? One partial reason is that individuals just don’t associate tiredness with hearing loss. But there’s another reason that might inevitably be more damaging: stigma. There’s a feeling that hearing loss is terrible or ruins your life or that there’s nothing that can be done about it. People will frequently avoid pursuing treatment because of these mistaken notions.
However, as more people are open about their hearing loss experience, the stigma has started to disappear. Many people understand that hearing loss isn’t some type of social failing, and the very small nature of modern hearing aids makes them easy to hide around folks who unfortunately will not get over this stigma.
It’s unfortunate that this social stigma can make it harder for people to find the care they need because this often results in hearing loss that grows worse over time when it may not need to.
How to deal with hearing loss-associated fatigue
There are often 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 approach. Hearing specialists advocate for regular 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 a lot more effective after we have identified that baseline.
If your hearing loss is causing fatigue, there are some steps you can take to minimize that exhaustion as much as possible. Here are a few of the most common and easiest steps:
- If you use hearing aids, wear them as frequently as possible: One of the primary functions of hearing aids is to clarify human speech, making understanding conversations a lot easier. This means your brain won’t need to work as hard and you will not experience the same degree of fatigue.
- Schedule an assessment with a hearing specialist: Keeping an eye on the condition of your hearing is essential. Seeing 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 need to work as hard to compensate.
- Try to have conversations in quieter places: Distinguishing voices from background noise can be difficult when you have hearing loss (often whether you’re using hearing aids or not). Moving conversations to a location with less background noise can make it easier for your brain to focus on the voice you’re attempting to hear, minimizing fatigue in the process.
- Give yourself a break in between conversations: Give yourself some quiet time to rest and refresh in between conversations. Your brain is working extra hard to participate in conversation and brief breaks will make that more sustainable.
So if you’re experiencing an unusual amount of fatigue and tiredness, with no evident cause, it may be time to plan a visit to your hearing specialist. Treating hearing loss can help you minimize your exhaustion and boost your energy. Don’t neglect your hearing loss because you’re afraid of the stigma.
