Why can hearing aids cause headaches? When you have hearing loss, your auditory system and your brain don’t get as much stimulation as they once had when you had normal hearing. Essentially, with a hearing loss, your hearing nerve and your brain are not getting enough exercise. So, when you first get hearing aids, you are basically suddenly asking your brain to work much harder, because you a hearing more signals coming from your daily environments.
If you think about it, if I were to ask you to run a marathon, could you instantly do it? Probably not, unless you were already training for it. It is the same for your brain. When you first get hearing aids, some patients can get a little tired because their body is receiving more stimuli from the environment. Occasionally, patients can also get a headache because their brain is a bit on overdrive, hearing all these sounds again.
Is it Common for Hearing Aids to Cause Headaches?
In close to 10 years of clinical experience, I have rarely seen patients experience this. This said, if you do feel quite tired and feel like your hearing aid are giving you a headache, try to limit the amount of time you are wearing them, and slowly increasing it. If you need to give yourself a break, by all means, this is okay. Just try to wear your hearing aids little by little, until you can wear them all day. If these symptoms don’t stop though, consult with your Audiologist as typically, these symptoms disappear within about one week.
