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In a study among people aged 40 to 69, researchers found that a hearing loss of 25 decibels triples the chance of falling. That might seem like quite a bit of decibel loss, but it is quite unnoticeable, it’s about the drop needed to take a person from normal to mild hearing loss, which is notoriously hard to self-diagnose.
It’s worth noting that treating hearing loss can help prevent injury and accident, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cites falls as the leading cause of accidental death in folks over 65.
But what does hearing have to do with balance, anyways? What many people don’t realize is that balance and our sense of hearing share the same nerve pathway to the brain. Additionally, our sense of hearing helps us stay safe and centered in the world. When that sense is compromised, so is our safety.
Reasons hearing loss might make us ‘accident prone’
Lack of environmental awareness
While our gaze must be focused on something for our eyes to register its presence, our ears hear everything that’s happening around us. Healthy hearing affords us that 360-degree range of awareness, but when hearing loss is present our environmental awareness suffers, too.
We might not hear traffic signals as well, a pet trotting up behind us, or small children running around. Particularly if we’ve lived a life that relies upon our sense of hearing to help inform us of our environment, hearing loss can dramatically reduce our awareness.
Loss of proprioception (spatial awareness)
When you have lived a majority of life with healthy hearing, it becomes an important way to orient yourself in the world. Binaural hearing (our two ears) measures the different volumes of sound from a source to locate where the noise is coming from. This helps us in emergencies — like jumping out of the way when we hear a car horn. It can also help us on a more subconscious level to sense where we are in relation to other objects. This is called spatial awareness, and our attunement to where our bodies are is called proprioception. Both tend to decrease when later in life hearing loss makes an appearance.
Lack of mental and physical resources
Though our ears get all the glory, so much of how we hear happens in the brain’s processing centers. Before it reaches the brain, noise is collected by fine cells of the inner ear. They turn noise into sound information and send it to the brain via the auditory nerve. In our brain is where we make meaning, so quickly that it is an unconscious process. As the inner ear cells decline due to aging or exposure to harmful noise, they don’t reproduce. Our brains receive less sound information and they have to work much harder to make meaning. It’s like trying to do a puzzle when you are missing 40 percent of the pieces. You’ll struggle to fill in the blanks and it will probably tire you out.
People with hearing loss are considered more ‘accident prone’ because their brains and beings are expending a tremendous amount of effort to fill in the blanks. You have less energy and mental resources to spend on monitoring your balance.
Treating hearing loss can help
The great news is that treating hearing loss has a multitude of benefits. It can make conversation less frustrating, improve relationships, and provide a sense of confidence. It can even help your balance and spatial awareness! The return of audio cues will help you stay mindful of what’s happening around you and connected to your whereabouts. You will spend less time trying to fill in the blanks so you have the energy and mental capacity to concentrate on what’s in front of you.
Other ways to improve balance
Physical activity can help extend a good sense of balance well into our senior years. Yoga, for instance, helps keep the body mobile. As the saying goes, ‘use it or lose it!’ Many yoga classes, and even chair yoga classes, focus on both static (holding still) and dynamic (anticipating changes from one movement to another) balancing.
A small study of older women found that the risk of hip fracture dropped by five percent with each second the participants could stand on one leg with open eyes.
Schedule a hearing consultation
To find out if hearing loss is impacting your life, schedule a hearing consultation with us. Our team of highly trained hearing health professionals will help you through the easy process of a hearing exam. From there, we’ll talk about possible solutions or ways to help prioritize your healthiest hearing future.