Balance & Vestibular Therapy
Balance and Vestibular Rehabilitation
What is Balance and Vestibular Rehab?
Balance and Vestibular rehabilitation is an exercise-based program designed by a specialized physical therapist to improve balance and reduce dizziness-related problems. A treatment plan will be developed that will improve your ability to function in activities of everyday living, reduce your risk of falling, and ultimately improve your quality of life.
Who can benefit from this?
Patients who can benefit from vestibular rehabilitation therapy are those diagnosed with dizziness, imbalance, vertigo, Meniere's syndrome, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), neck-related dizziness, and migraines. Other candidates are patients who have had a stroke, or brain injury, or who frequently fall.
What are the benefits?
Balance and gait are inextricably linked because they tend to impact one another. Even if you don’t think you’re in danger of falling over, that “running out of steam” while walking that you’re attributing to aging muscles could be something else. The problem might actually be slowing reflexes, which make moving around seem more strenuous than it is. By the same token, poor posture and gait can throw off those reflexes.
In fact, the balance and gait systems both rely to some extent on a complex number of body systems that include the inner ear, the eyes, the joint-muscle-nerve system, and of course cognitive functions. Therapy that improves gait and balance works with all of these systems to keep them functioning in harmony.
Gait and balance training has a range of benefits, with avoiding injuries being at the top of the list. Beyond lessening your chances of falling or feeling dizzy, you’re also more likely to feel confident with your footing. In addition, those aches and pains from poor posture are likely to decrease as well.
What does this look like?
First, we’ll evaluate your gait to determine potential problems with strength and posture. Simple movements to test balance are also part of the assessment. Together, these basic evaluations point us in the direction of what to focus on in terms of therapy.
Hip and ankle weakness often leads to balance problems, as does poor posture. Strength and flexibility movements can help counteract these problems. These are often as simple as leg lifts while seated in a chair, or “knee marching.” We may also practice standing on one leg, walking heel-to-toe, or tracking the movement of your thumb with your eyes as you move it in various positions.
That’s why we provide a range of programs and therapies to evaluate and treat balance disorders:
These sensory components heavily involve our balance improvement and at Fyzical we treat our patients from a neurological lense to improve these three components.
Visual system
Your vision provides important information to the brain about your environment, specifically where your body is in relation to the horizon while still or moving.
Somatosensory system
You have special sensors sensitive to stretch, pressure, vibration, and touch in your muscles, tendons, joints, and skin that help your brain to know how your body is positioned.
Vestibular system
Organs in the inner ear tell the brain where the head is in space. Quite simply, the vestibular system is our internal reference telling the brain how our head is oriented - up, down, tilted, etc.
Visit us for your free fall risk assessment so that we can help you stay safe and improve daily living!