Even though hearing might not seem like it takes much physical effort, when we have trouble hearing, it puts a lot of stress on our whole body and can make us feel tired.
If you have hearing loss, you need to be aware of the extra stress and give yourself time to rest and get your energy back. A new study has even found that hearing aids can help ease some of the stress that hearing loss puts on our bodies.
How hearing loss starts
We’ve already said that hearing isn’t usually linked to physical work. Hearing loss makes your brain work harder all the time, which can slow down other physical tasks your brain does. So why does hearing loss make us tired?
When sound waves move through the air, they make tiny “hair cells” move inside the inner ear. These hair cells can pick up various sounds, but too loud sounds can easily damage them. Unfortunately, a damaged hair cell can’t fix itself. This means that if a cell is damaged, we lose a little of our ability to hear a wide range of sounds. Hearing loss can happen in many different ways, but it is permanent and happens slowly over time as the inner ear is damaged by noise.
Permanent hearing loss from noise happens when many hair cells are damaged, and there are significant gaps in the sounds we can hear clearly. Some sounds, like those with a high pitch, may be out of our range of hearing, while others, like speech, may sound muffled or unclear. When we don’t hear all the sounds, our brains try to figure out what we hear as quickly as possible.
Brain fatigue
The brain is in charge of composing incomplete sounds that are muffled or only heard in parts. Before hearing loss becomes a problem, hearing is streamlined, and we can almost instantly figure out what sounds mean.
When we have hearing loss, it takes us longer to understand what sounds mean. The brain can’t use its usual shortcuts and paths to figure out what something means. Instead, pieces of information and clues from the context need to be put together to make sense. Not only does this mean that our brain has to use new pathways for hearing, but it also means that we need more mental power to do the detective work we now have to do to figure out what sounds mean. When we have hearing loss, our brain has to work harder to figure out what sounds mean, and it does this much more slowly and with less accuracy than when we have good hearing.
Hearing loss can make it hard to think clearly, which has been linked to more injuries from falling and is thought to be part of the link between hearing loss and dementia. The other reason is that when the hearing takes up more of our mental energy, it takes energy away from other parts of our cognitive functioning. This can make it harder for us to remember things or keep our balance. This means that if you have hearing loss, you already have to work much harder mentally every day, which can make you tired.
A study finds hearing treatment could lessen fatigue.
A study in Scotland found that people who start using hearing aids feel less tired and spend more time with friends. The study found that people with hearing loss who started using hearing aids were much less tired from listening, their social activity levels went up, and their ability to participate in social activities was much less limited than in the control group, which did not start using hearing aids.
The 106 people who took part in the study were between the ages of 18 and 75. For people to be in the group of “new hearing aid users,” they had to say that they had trouble hearing, were getting their first hearing aids, and we’re not going to the audiology clinic because of tinnitus or balance problems.
If you think your hearing is making your life hard, the first thing you should do is set up a full hearing test. Our clinic offers thorough exams and hearing care that focuses on finding the right solution for your lifestyle. We can find the best hearing solution for you and help you hear better, so why wait? Contact us today to find out what we can do for you.