In case you missed it, we’ve just launched our brand new-show, Coffee & Audiology.
Dan Hewson talks about all things hearing-related, including balance, hearing loss, and the sticky substance inside of your ears. But, of course, it wouldn’t be Dan Hewson if he wasn’t armed with a cup of coffee!
What is Coffee & Audiology?
You know how boring it can get watching the same TV programs over and over again, so why not educate yourself by watching an easily digestible program by one of Arizona’s leading practitioners?
With so much conflicting information available on the internet, Coffee and Audiology aims to challenge the myths and misconceptions about hearing loss, ensuring you have a clearer understanding of hearing.
It brings together Dan’s passion for coffee, which of course is AC/Decaf, and a fun monthly episode, including one of our most commonly asked questions.
Snuggled up with a cup of coffee + watching the charismatic Dan Hewson = What more could you want?
In this week, Dan Hewson answered:
Question #1 – Is it Possible That My Hearing Loss Can Cause Balance Issues?
== Prefer to Read than Watch? Here are the Transcripts for You ==
So, the short answer is yes and no.
Because when it comes to balance and relationships with hearing loss, it’s important that when we make our case history, our focus is to start at the top of the head and work all the way down to the feet.
I recently had a patient who came in to discuss his balance issues and has a hearing loss, 45, 50% loss of hearing, great understanding of speech, so when he was in background noise; he heard beautiful in that, just needed more volume.
But when he talked about his balance, his biggest issue is, he’s noticed that he has neuropathy and notices that as he called it, he came and just said vertigo.
When we did testing to see if he had vertigo, he did not have vertigo, but he had this light-headedness, imbalance issues, and it was coming from that he’s losing strength in his legs ’cause he had a triple bypass.
Also, he was having a lot of difficulty with just the neuropathy in general.
So, it’s misunderstood that what he needs is physical therapy. Give you a little balanced therapy to help him. He needs hearing aids to help with this hearing because his hearing is affected by the localization directionality.
He’s losing that, and you have to remember that your inner ear is like a compass.
It helps you to localize where things are coming from, and when we start losing that, our brain loses the sense of direction and being aware of things that are around us.
It’s important to understand people’s medications, the medications they’re taking that can cause dizziness, light-headedness, and vertigo-like symptoms.
When I worked in an ear, nose, and throat practice for 15 years, the focus was to give a deeper dive to really understand what was wrong with the patient.
Otherwise, what happens is patients get pushed on from one specialist to the other, and we miss out on so many important details that we end up finding that we’re not really getting our answers to the questions that we have.
So, hearing loss and balance issues are very correlated. A person with a mild loss is three times as likely to have issues with their balance. And we know how important balance as we get older; it’s a number one cause of death over the age of 75.
It is essential to be aware of that because as we get older, our body loses its ability to stabilize, whether it’s from strength, we have vertigo, whatever the case may be, that’s causing these issues, neuropathy and so forth, but we lose our balance, we fall, we hurt ourselves it’s a very detrimental thing to the body.
So there you have it!
Intrigued to find out more? Brace yourself for next week’s episode, where we explore the differences between the hearing aid manufacturers…
