Our vital sense of balance

MOST people would say you have five senses: touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste. Recently, scientists have expanded their view of what makes up a sense.

Without your sense of balance, you couldn’t stand or walk without falling on your face. Balance is the result of the brain processing information that comes from your eyes, your inner ear and something called proprioception. You obviously need your eyes to see and let you know where you are relative to your surroundings.

Your inner ear contains the vestibular system, which has three semicircular canals, filled with a liquid called endolymph. When you move your head up and down, the endolymph moves and triggers hair cells within the canals to send nerve signals to the brain, which interprets these signals to stabilise eye movement and your sense of where you are relative to your surroundings.

Proprioception refers to the ability to know where your body parts are in relation to one another. Every second that you stand or move around, thousands of nerve signals pass back and forth between your body parts and brain, and allow your brain to know where you are in space and to co-ordinate the muscular contractions needed to carry out specific actions and to keep you from falling.

Your doctor can check your balance by asking you to do the following tasks:

- Hold your arms away from your body and alternately bring each index finger to the tip of your nose with your eyes closed.

- Walk heel to toe. Do it with your arms at your side and then with your arms across your chest.

You can easily do these tests at home. Also try to stand on one foot without falling for 30 seconds. Now, try it again with your eyes closed. It’s much harder without your eyes, isn’t it? – The Washington Post.