Vestibular rehabilitation therapy consists of exercises that help you manage balance issues and dizziness. It may help people cope with the symptoms of some conditions including:
• Vertigo.
• Labyrinthitis.
• Stroke.
• Falling
• Vestibular neuritis.
• Migraine headache.
• Traumatic brain injury.
• Ménière disease.
• Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV).
Dizziness
Dizziness happens when something affects your sense of spatial orientation. Spatial orientation is your brain calculating the position of your body in relation to your surroundings. When that happens, you may feel woozy or lightheaded. You also may feel unsteady, and lose your sense of balance.
Balance
Your sense of balance relies on the relationship between your central nervous system (brain) and your sensory system. Your sensory system includes:
- Your vestibular labyrinth in your inner ear: This includes your semicircular canals (loops), which react when you turn your head, and otolith organs that react to gravity and movement.
- Your vision: Your eyes send your brain impulses that show where your body is about other objects.
- Your skin, joints, and muscles: When your body moves, it puts pressure on your tissues. Your tissues send signals to your brain, telling it where your body is about space. For example, if you’re standing up and you lean back, you put pressure on tissues in the back of your foot and lower leg. That pressure lets your brain know you’re leaning instead of standing straight.
Your central nervous system pulls this information together so it can tell your body how to maintain balance. When something interferes with the system’s connection, your central nervous system can’t process information correctly. Vestibular rehabilitation therapy helps restore those connections, ultimately reducing your symptoms of dizziness and imbalance.
What happens during therapy?
Balance issues and dizziness may affect you in different ways. Your healthcare provider will tailor vestibular rehabilitation therapy to your specific need. They’ll show you how to do specific exercises so you can exercise at home. Therapy may include these exercises:
- Eye movement control.
- Balance retraining.
- Stretching and strengthening.
The Biodex Balance
System SD has been designed to meet the needs of everyone looking to improve balance, increase agility, develop muscle tone and treat a wide variety of pathologies. Featuring easy-to-follow touchscreen operation, the Balance System SD is simple to learn and operate, leading the user step-by-step through testing protocols and training modes in both static and dynamic formats. Extremely versatile, it is the only system that provides a fast, accurate Fall Risk Screening and Conditioning Program for older adults; closed-chain, weight-bearing assessment and training for lower extremity patients, and adds the objective balance assessment component to a concussion management program.
The Balance System SD also serves as a valuable training device to enhance kinesthetic abilities that may provide some degree of compensation for impaired proprioceptive reflex mechanisms following injury. Using this unique device, clinicians can assess neuromuscular control by quantifying the ability to maintain dynamic bilateral and unilateral postural stability on a static or unstable surface.
