The Connection Between Your Ears And Maintaining A Healthy Balance
Balance skills are essential to everyone because quite simply without balance we fall over. The body has to balance itself thousands of times each day. Each time we take a foot off the floor to walk, the body has to make adjustments, so that it knows where it is in relation to the floor. Each human movement whether it is brushing your hair, getting out of a car or making a cup of tea requires both balance and movement. Movement is a necessary component of healthy balance. When we adopt a sedentary lifestyle there is the danger of becoming more unstable, and this in turn can lead to serious accidents which can result in broken bones.
Although your ears are hearing organs, they are also the body’s primary organ of balance. We all have three balance systems, – the vestibular system is located in your inner ears and it senses gravity or weight, curved and straight movements. It has thousands of miniscule hair cells that send balance signals for your brain to interpret where you are in relation to other physical things. Your eyes have an ocular system of balance which can detect movement and your position in relation to the ground. The third balance system is known as the proprioceptive system and this uses sensors in your legs and feet to sense where your body is and also gravity.
Your eyes constantly change their position and focus as you move. This is a subconscious reaction which you don’t even have to think about, but without it you would see a completely bleary world. Unfortunately, your eyes and ears work in tandem and if the vestibular system is not working correctly your eye muscles can’t adjust properly because the input signals from the ear are faulty and this results in blurred vision or oscillopsia. This means that you can’t accurately ascertain exactly where the floor is in relation to where you are, and the risk of tripping over is high.
Anything that disrupts this process has a direct effect on your vision, – you will have problems with depth perception and focusing on a moving object. If you can’t judge the depths of an object it is very easy to bump into it. As well as a blurred vision you may feel nauseous, or dizzy, and find that flickering lights make this worse.
The vestibulo-spinal reflex controls muscle adjustments so you don’t fall over when you change position. The vestibular sends information about balance to your brain and parts of the nervous system which control the muscles. Together they help you maintain your balance and stop you from flopping over. When these don’t work you suffer a condition called ataxia which means you have a tendency to walk as if you are drunk. This occurs even in well let situations, but the situation gets much worse when it is dark, or the ground is uneven.
Although there are three systems in place to maintain balance, your body can cope, at a pinch, if one of them breaks down. The vestibular system in your ears is the main balance system and if that’s not working then the strain is immense because your ocular system doesn’t work as effectively in the dark in practice this means you only have your proprioceptive system to balance you.
However, it is more likely that your vestibular system is damaged rather than suffer a complete breakdown when this occurs it still sends signals the brain. Unfortunately the brain can’t realise that these are inaccurate signals and it still acts on them which is why people suffer from vertigo, dizziness or nausea, your body is not where your balance system thinks it is. As time goes on the brain realises that the vestibular system is not in tandem with the other two balance systems and it relies more on ocular and proprioceptive inputs which means that the symptoms can improve.
Our balance systems are incredibly complex, they happen naturally without conscious thought, but if our balance systems are damaged we may have to think about balance. This could have a serious effect on memory, the muscles become more rigid as we have to think about balance and this has an effect on stability. Many drugs can affect our balance system and it is always worth speaking to your doctor about the side-effects of certain drugs to your ears. Balance whilst it works perfectly is something that we all take for granted; once it is not functioning properly we are aware of it every second of every day.
About the Author
Written on behalf of Digital Hearing Care and
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