It’s no fun when you can’t sleep at night. Particularly when it happens regularly. You toss and turn and probably stare at the clock (or your phone) and stress about just how fatigued you’ll be the next day. Medical professionals call this kind of chronic sleeplessness “insomnia”. Over time, the effects of chronic insomnia will compound, negatively impacting your overall health.
And the health of your hearing, not unexpectedly, is part of your general health. That’s correct, insomnia can have an impact on your ability to hear. This isn’t necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship, but that doesn’t mean there’s no connection between hearing loss and insomnia.
Can your hearing be impacted by lack of sleep?
How could loss of sleep possibly affect your hearing? According to significant research, your cardiovascular system can be affected by insomnia over a long time period. It becomes harder for your blood to circulate into all of the extremities of your body when you aren’t getting the regenerative power of a good night’s sleep.
Stress and anxiety also increase when you have insomnia. Feeling stressed and anxious will affect you in physiological ways as well as mentally.
So how is that relevant to hearing loss? There are little hairs inside of your ears known as stereocilia. These fragile hairs vibrate when sound takes place and the information gets sent to your brain, which then converts those vibrations into sounds.
These little hairs have a hard time staying healthy when there are circulatory problems. These hairs can, in some cases, be permanently damaged. Damage of this type is permanent. Permanent hearing loss can be the outcome, and the longer the circulation problems persist, the worse the damage will be.
Does it also work the other way around?
Is it possible for hearing loss to cause you to lose sleep? Yes, it can! Many individuals favor a little background sound when they try to sleep and hearing loss can make the world really quiet. For people in this category, that amount of silence can make it really difficult to get a quality night’s sleep. Any kind of hearing loss anxiety (for instance, if you’re stressed about losing your hearing) can have a similar impact.
If you have hearing loss, what can you do to get a good night’s sleep? Stress on your brain can be decreased by wearing your hearing aids every day because you won’t be wearing them while you sleep. It can also help if you follow some other sleep-health tips.
Some guidelines for a good night’s sleep
- For at least a couple of hours before bed, try to abstain from liquids: Needing to get up and go to the bathroom can initiate the “wake up” process in your brain. So, sleeping through the night is better.
- Try to de-stress as much as possible: Get away from work and do something relaxing before bed.
- Don’t drink caffeine after lunch.: Even if you drink decaf, it still has enough caffeine to give you problems sleeping. This includes soda also.
- Get some exercise regularly: Your body needs to move, and if you aren’t moving, you may end up going to bed with some excess energy. Getting enough exercise every day can really be helpful.
- Maintain your bedroom for sleeping (mostly): Try to limit the amount of things you utilize your bedroom for. For instance, don’t work in your bedroom.
- Avoid screens for at least 1 hour before going to bed: (Really, the longer the better.) Screens have a tendency to stimulate your brain
- Before you go to bed, avoid drinking alcohol: This will simply disrupt your natural sleep cycle.
Be aware of the health of your hearing
You can still control your symptoms even if you have hearing loss along with some insomnia.
Schedule Online for a hearing exam today!