How Vestibular Rehabilitation Can Help With Balance-Related Illnesses
Posted on: 11 July 2016
If you suffer from any type of disorder that causes you to feel dizzy or off-balanced, you may be able to solve this issue through physical therapy. There are a variety of different conditions that cause these symptoms, including vertigo, and most of these are caused by an imbalance in the middle ear. Here are several things you should know about dizziness and vestibular rehabilitation.
What Is Vestibular Rehabilitation?
Vestibular rehabilitation is a form of physical therapy that is specifically designed to help alleviate the symptoms of conditions that cause dizziness and other similar symptoms. Living with vertigo, or any other similar condition, can reduce the quality of life and can end up disturbing the activities you do. Treating this type of condition is not always easy, but it can be solved through vestibular rehabilitation in most cases.
Vestibular rehabilitation focuses on improving the parts of the vestibular system of your body. This system is responsible for providing you with balance, and it includes the eyes, muscles, and joints. These parts of the body work together with your brain to help you feel balanced when you are sitting, standing, or walking; but if they are not working properly together, you can suffer from dizziness and other symptoms that affect your balance.
There are many things that can interfere with this process, and the nerves in your body play a big role in this. Without proper nerve function, the signals between your brain and these body parts can be interrupted. When this happens, you are likely to begin feeling the symptoms of your disorder.
How Does Vestibular Rehabilitation Help?
When you decide to seek help for your dizziness through vestibular rehabilitation, you will have to perform a variety of different exercises and activities. One of the goals of this is to help your brain, eyes, joints, and muscles work together as they should. Another goal is to improve the functions of the nervous system.
Vestibular rehabilitation also aims to desensitize the way the brain is currently responding to the miscommunications of signals from the body parts in the vestibular system. Through certain exercises, a physical therapist can help trigger the symptoms of dizziness to begin. Once this occurs, the therapist can try to train the brain to ignore these impulses. If this is successful, your brain will not respond in the ways it has been, and this can reduce the frequency of your dizzy spells.
What Does This Involve?
Seeking help for your condition is something you can do by visiting a chiropractor or any other type of professional that specializes in physical therapy or vestibular rehabilitation. It may take going just once to experience positive results, or it may take attending several sessions. During the sessions, you may feel slightly uncomfortable as the therapist triggers your symptoms to begin, but this will not last forever.
Your therapist will also work with you to help you perform activities that involve moving and stretching your head and neck. Some of these may be done while lying down, while others may be completed while sitting or standing. Your therapist might also recommend completing activities at home, such as aerobics or yoga. The purpose will be to help you become stronger. When you are stronger, your muscles may begin responding properly, and this may help you conquer the feelings of dizziness you experience on a regular basis.
Vertigo and other related illnesses can be dangerous to live with. The symptoms can kick in at any time, and this can result in injuries. If you would like to get help for this problem, you may want to talk to your chiropractor about physical therapy options for treating balance-related illnesses.
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