If you’ve been feeling abnormally or overly tired at the end of the day, especially on days when you were socializing a lot or doing a lot of listening, like at lectures or a conference, you may be experiencing listening fatigue. Hearing and paying attention are more tiring than we realize, but they can be even more so when dealing with untreated hearing loss.
What Is Listening Fatigue?
Listening fatigue (sometimes called listener’s fatigue) is extreme tiredness after sustained speech-processing demands. It is mental, physical and emotional exhaustion caused by the effort of hearing and paying attention. It is usually a symptom of the beginning stages of hearing loss.
How Does Hearing Loss Contribute to Listening Fatigue?
When sound waves enter our ears, they initiate a step-by-step process that causes us to hear sound. Sound waves hit the eardrum in the outer ear, causing it to vibrate (much like a drum). The eardrum’s vibrations travel through the middle ear, where they are amplified into the inner ear. The inner ear transforms the waves into electrical signals, which your auditory nerve carries to the brain to be interpreted as sound. Technically, while your ears pick up sound information, it is your brain that hears.
For people without hearing loss, this process happens smoothly and automatically. For people with hearing loss, however, the brain must work much harder to hear. Interruptions to the flow of sound information to the brain mean the brain must work harder to receive, process, and interpret the information. It may have to fill in the gaps where you didn’t hear a word or sentence correctly or work through excess background noise.
Cognitive (or brain) power is not an unlimited resource, so the more energy your brain needs to receive incomplete sound information, decipher its meaning, filter out background noise, fill in the gaps of what you hear and formulate a response, the less power it will have for other activities.
How to Overcome Listening Fatigue?
Combatting listening fatigue can be difficult since much is out of your control, but making the listening environment as conducive to hearing as possible will help. Turn off music and close doors to eliminate background noise. Take breaks from strenuous listening wherever possible and find a quiet corner in which to rest your ears awhile.
Also, try to give your body and brain as much energy as possible. Prioritize getting enough sleep and eating a healthy diet.
Hearing Aids
28.8 million U.S. adults could benefit from hearing aids. Listening fatigue is one of the first warning signs that you may be one of them. The good news is that hearing aids have been proven to help significantly with listening fatigue. Hearing aids bridge the gap between your ears and your brain, getting sound information to the brain and reducing background noise. This will help the brain process sound information, meaning less cognitive load. Call Spartanburg-Greer ENT & Allergy today to learn more about hearing aids and make an appointment.