It’s 5 PM and the end of a difficult day at work. Your colleagues are asking you if you want to grab a quick drink on the way home, but you’re hesitant because it’s difficult for you to follow conversation in a noisy bar or restaurant. Also, you’re tried from trying to make sense of what people have been saying in meetings or on the phone all day. Does this describe one of your normal working days? If so, your fatigue might be due to an untreated hearing loss. Overwhelming exhaustion can happen for a number of reasons, but hearing loss makes you especially vulnerable to its effects.
Hearing & the Brain
Hearing is mostly a passive activity and doesn’t require much effort. But active listening can be a mentally draining for anyone, even those with normal hearing. It requires prolonged focus and mental attention. We need to listen in order to respond appropriately, whether with work colleagues or with our friends and family. For those with an untreated hearing loss, it can be especially tiring.
Learning to listen is as much a brain activity as it is a function of the ears. Our inner ear has the job of transmitting auditory information to the auditory cortex in the brain, where it is recognized and processed as sound. When we develop hearing loss, the auditory information being sent is poorer quality, leaving out large parts of sound information. This means that the brain has to work harder to process the sound in order to make sense of it.
Your brain on average uses about 20% of the calories you consume everyday. Activating parts of the brain on hearing loss, like those used for hearing, opens up the capillaries and demand more blood than usual, along with extra glucose and oxygen. So when the brain has to work harder, it uses more calories and tires us out quicker.
As the brain works overtime, it takes valuable resources away from other parts of the brain that need it, such as those areas which control balance and coordination. This also causes us to tire more quickly, making previously surmountable energy demands of the day seem insurmountable. That’s why you feel exhausted at the end of a work day or after drinks with your friends in a noisy bar. You brain is working so hard to keep up that it runs itself into the ground.
It’s important to find ways to manage this mental exhaustion, and not just because of the need to meet your daily commitments. There are mental and financial implications to consider, the effects of which can reverberate through different aspects of your life. Let’s explore the potential effects of mental exhaustion through hearing loss in turn.
Your cognitive abilities suffer
Dr. Ervin Hafter, a professor of psychology at the University of California Berkeley, claims that the work required to manage your hearing loss in noisy places can create an ‘cognitive overload’ that can sap your ability to perform mental tasks. If you work in an industry which requires a lot of long periods of focused concentration, this can seriously affect your work performance and could see you begin to fall behind your peers.
You become less employable
A survey done in Europe by The Danish Institute for Social Research found several ways in which those with hearing loss were put at a disadvantage on the job market. About one in five people with hearing loss was debilitated by their hearing loss to such an extent that they couldn’t work anymore as a result. They found that those with hearing loss were 50% more likely to be unemployed than those with normal hearing.
There is also evidence of a common trend of exhaustion towards the end of the working day. About 47% of the hearing loss population complained of mental exhaustion, compared with 36% of those without heating loss. The numbers rose to 51% and 31% respectively for physical exhaustion. These figures show that mental and physical exhaustion is a regular occurrence for employees with hearing loss and that it can affect your employability.
What you should do about it
Here are a few ways you can tackle fatigue throughout the day if you suspect you have an untreated hearing loss:
- Take a break from the noise by going for a walk in a nearby park.
- Practice deep breathing or meditation regularly.
- Eliminate background noise in your office wherever possible.
- Take a 20-minute nap during your lunch break.
- Schedule a hearing test with us at Hearing Wellness Solutions.
A comprehensive hearing test can reveal the presence of a hearing loss. The most common treatment for hearing loss is the use of hearing aids. These devices can help your brain hear better in noise environments and can result in reduced mental and physical exhaustion.