How hearing loss leads to higher risk of falling — new video posted to AP Newsroom

In this video, she explains the correlation between hearing loss and falling.

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Storyline

Melissa Newell is a clinical assistant professor in the College of Health and Human Sciences at Purdue University. In this video, she explains the correlation between hearing loss and falling. Newell says hearing loss is something that can be hard to detect, and other people may notice it first. According to Newell, when people have hearing loss, they have to work much harder to function physically. Newell also says that hearing provides spatial information about your environment. When you have hearing loss, you also lose some sense of your spatial awareness, which can increase the risk of falling. Newell says researchers are also continuing to learn more about the vestibular system in relation to hearing. She says hearing loss can cause damage to the vestibular system, which impacts the body’s reflexes and can increase the chances of not only falling but also getting more hurt when you fall. Newell says diseases like diabetes can also be hard on ears, vision and feeling in the legs and feet. Newell advises people to protect their hearing by avoiding loud sounds or wearing hearing protection and says hearing aids help people with hearing loss function properly. Newell concludes that we’re doing a pretty good job of learning how to keep people alive longer, but we need to do a lot of work at keeping people in a good state when they’re older. 

About Purdue University

Purdue University is a public research institution with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities and with two colleges in the top four in the United States, Purdue discovers and disseminates knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 105,000 students study at Purdue across modalities and locations, with 50,000 in person on the West Lafayette campus. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap, including its first comprehensive urban campus in Indianapolis, the new Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, and Purdue Computes, at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.