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June 2026 – Having trouble hearing can raise the risk of falling.

When you have trouble hearing, you might miss out on conversations, but untreated hearing loss is also linked to other, less obvious health issues.

Hearing problems may affect your balance, which can raise the risk of falling.More than 1 in 4 older adults fall each year, and 3 million of them end up going to the emergency room.

Keeping your balance requires a lot of input from various sources. You need to see well, for one. Your sense of touch is also important. And so are your ears. Here’s why:

Your inner ear helps with balance. That’s where your vestibular system is located. This system sends information to your brain about keeping upright, motion, and where your head and body are in relation to your surroundings.

Your hearing is key to your sense of location. “Sounds bounce off objects, so we can tell how close or far we are from an object,” says Lisa Bennett, a hearing instrument specialist.

If you can’t hear well, you don’t know where the sounds are coming from. That can throw off your balance, Bennett says.

When your brain is struggling to hear, it’s harder to focus on other things. “You’re concentrating more on hearing than your surroundings sometimes, and it can cause you to be off balance,” Bennett says.

For all these reasons, older adults with hearing loss have more than double the risk of falling.

If you have any hearing issues, get your ears checked by a hearing care professional, such as an audiologist or hearing aid specialist. Even if you don’t think you have any trouble hearing, it’s still a good idea to have a comprehensive exam and consultation, Bennett says.

Early intervention is always better, Bennett says. That way if you have hearing loss, you can start treatment.

One study found that using hearing aids regularly for more than 4 hours a day cut the risk of falling by more than half. […]

Try some balance exercises

“Exercise is always helpful,” Bennett says. She suggests tai chi or yoga as ways to move and increase balance. But you can do simple balance exercises at home, too.

Source: https://www.aarphearingsolutions.com/resources/articles/article/hearing-loss/why-hearing-loss-may-affect-your-balance

Editor’s note: This concludes the republished article from AARP. The following resources are provided by Altura to help readers explore related balance exercises: