When you’re a kid, falling is just a part of life. Taking a tumble on your bicycle? That’s normal. Getting tripped up while running across the yard. Also fairly typical. Kids are pretty limber so, no big deal. They bounce back pretty easily.
As you grow older though, that becomes less and less true. Falling becomes more and more of a worry as you get older. One reason for this is that bones are more brittle and heal slower when you’re older. Older individuals tend to spend more time lying on the floor in pain because they have a harder time getting back up. As a result, falls are the number one injury-connected cause of death in people older than 65.
That’s why tools and devices that can decrease falls are always being sought after by healthcare professionals. New research seems to indicate that we might have determined one such device: hearing aids.
Can falls be caused by hearing loss
In order to understand why hearing aids can help avert falls, it helps to ask a related question: does hearing loss make you more likely to fall in the first place? It appears as if the answer might be, yes.
So why does hearing loss increase the risk of a fall for people?
There’s not exactly an intuitive link. After all, hearing loss doesn’t directly impact your ability to move or see. But it turns out there are some symptoms of hearing loss that do have this kind of direct impact on your ability to move around, and these symptoms can lead to a higher danger of having a fall. Some of those symptoms include:
- You have less situational awareness: You may not be able to hear the sound of your neighbor’s footsteps, the dog barking next door, or an oncoming vehicle when you have neglected hearing loss. In other words, your situational awareness might be significantly impacted. Can you become clumsy like this as a result of hearing loss? Well, sort of, loss of situational awareness can make daily activities slightly more hazardous. And that means you might be slightly more likely to accidentally stumble into something, and take a tumble.
- Exhaustion: When you have neglected hearing loss, your ears are always straining, and your brain is always working extra hard. Your brain will be constantly tired as a consequence. A weary brain is less likely to detect that obstacle in your path, and, as a consequence, you might end up tripping and falling over something that an alert brain would have seen.
- You’re unable to hear high-frequency sounds: You know how when you go into an auditorium, you instantly detect that you’re in a huge venue, even if you close your eyes? Or how you can instantly tell that you’re in a small space when you get into a vehicle. Your ears are actually utilizing something like “echolocation” and high-frequency sound to assist your spatial awareness. When you can no longer hear high-pitch sounds due to hearing loss, you can’t make those assessments quite as rapidly or intuitively. Loss of situational awareness and disorientation can be the result.
- Loss of balance: How is your balance affected by hearing loss? Well, your general balance depends greatly on your inner ear. So when hearing loss affects your inner ear, you might find yourself a little more likely to grow dizzy, experience vertigo, or have trouble maintaining your balance. As a result of this, you may fall down more often.
- Depression: Social solitude and maybe even cognitive decline can be the result of neglected hearing loss. You are likely to be at home a lot more when you’re socially separated, and tripping dangers will be all around without anyone to help you.
Part of the connection between falling and hearing loss is also in your age. As you get older, you’re more likely to develop permanent and progressive hearing loss. That will increase the probability of falling. Consequently, when you get older, falls are more likely to have serious repercussions.
How can hearing aids help minimize falls?
If hearing loss is part of the problem, it makes sense that hearing aids should be part of the solution. And new research has confirmed that. One recent study discovered that using hearing aids could cut your risk of a fall in half.
In the past, these figures (and the connection between hearing aids and staying upright) were a bit less clear. In part, that’s because not everybody wears their hearing aids all of the time. As a consequence, falls among “hearing aid users” were often inconclusive. This wasn’t because the hearing aids were malfunctioning, it was because people weren’t wearing them.
But this new study took a different (and perhaps more accurate) approach. People who wore their hearing aids often were put in a different group than those who wore them occasionally.
So why does using your hearing aids help you prevent falls? In general, they keep you more vigilant, more focused, and less fatigued. It also helps that you have added spatial awareness. Many hearing aids also include a feature that can alert the authorities and family members in case of a fall. Help will arrive quicker this way.
But the trick here is to be certain you’re using your hearing aids frequently and regularly.
Prevent falls with new hearing aids
Hearing aids can help you catch up with your friends, enjoy quality moments with your loved ones, and stay in touch with everybody who’s significant in your life.
They can also help prevent a fall!
Schedule an appointment with us right away if you want to know more about how your quality of life can be improved.