Is There a Cure for Falling?
We’ll give you the most straightforward answer we can to the question, “Can falling be cured?”
Answer: No.
But there is also no cure for heart disease, diabetes, or most chronic medical conditions affecting older adults.
The real question to ask is, “Can my fall risk be effectively reduced?”
Answer: Yes! With the right combination of evaluation, treatment, and lifestyle changes, fall risk can be reduced significantly in most adults — even those who have already fallen.
What Is the Medical Definition of a Fall?
A fall is an unintentional event in which a person comes to rest on the ground, floor, or another lower level — with or without injury. In older adults, falls are rarely accidents. They are the visible result of underlying issues with balance, strength, medications, vision, or hearing.
Is There a Proven Way to Reduce My Fall Factor?
Yes. The most effective approach addresses the root causes simultaneously, improving balance and strength through targeted exercise, reviewing medications with a physician, correcting vision and hearing deficits, and removing environmental hazards from the home. Of these, treating hearing loss is often the most overlooked, despite research showing it can be one of the most impactful.
Does Balance Training Alone Work to Prevent Falls?
Balance training is an important part of fall prevention, but it rarely works on its own. Most falls have multiple causes, and balance exercises don’t address the medications, vision, or hearing issues that may be quietly contributing to your risk. A comprehensive plan that includes a hearing evaluation, medication review, and balance training together produces far better outcomes than any single intervention.
Are Falls Harmful?
YES.
Falls are the leading cause of injury and injury-related death for adults over 65. Each year, more than 14 million older Americans report falling, and roughly 300,000 are hospitalized for hip fractures caused by falls. One in four seniors who suffers a hip fracture dies within six months of the injury.
Beyond the physical injuries, a fall often triggers a downward spiral of reduced activity, social withdrawal, loss of independence, and accelerated cognitive decline. This is why your Fall Factor matters, it gives you the chance to act before a fall takes any of those things from you.
Can Hearing Loss Really Cause Falls?
Yes, and the evidence is striking. A Johns Hopkins study led by Dr. Frank Lin found that adults with even mild hearing loss (25 decibels) were nearly three times more likely to have a history of falling. Every additional 10 decibels of hearing loss increased the chances of falling by another 1.4 times.
The reason is that your ears do more than hear. They provide your brain with constant spatial information that helps you balance and orient yourself in your environment. When hearing declines, your brain has to work harder to stay oriented, leaving fewer resources for keeping you upright.
Will Falling Cause Hearing Loss?
It’s the other way around, hearing loss contributes to falling, not the reverse. However, the same underlying neural degeneration that causes age-related hearing loss often contributes to balance issues as well. This is why we often say that fall risk and hearing health are deeply connected, and why treating one without the other leaves the job half done.
How Long Will My Fall Risk Last?
Here’s our honest answer: if you don’t address the factors driving your Fall Factor, your risk will grow worse year over year. If you take action, through proper evaluation, treatment of underlying conditions, and consistent lifestyle changes, the odds are strongly in your favor that you’ll see your Fall Factor decline and stay lower for the long term.
Can Falls Be Prevented?
Most can. The CDC estimates that the majority of older-adult falls are predictable and preventable when their root causes are identified and treated. The key is knowing your risk factors before a fall happens, which is exactly what your Fall Factor is designed to do.
External factors that increase fall risk include excessive alcohol use, poor sleep, deconditioning from inactivity, untreated hearing or vision loss, cluttered or poorly lit living spaces, and improper footwear.
What About Medication for Fall Prevention?
There are currently no FDA-approved medications specifically for preventing falls. In fact, the opposite is often true, medications are frequently a cause of falls rather than a treatment. The most effective interventions are non-pharmacological: hearing treatment, balance training, strength building, vision correction, and medication review.