Vestibular Rehabilitation Therapy

Since the previous post was so short, I figured we'd tell you about another service we at Reliance Home Health Care now take part in for our clients in the South Florida area.

For those of us who learn best when pictures are involved, the vestibular nerve is #16 in the diagram above.

Now, Vestibular Rehabilitation Therapy, which we'll just refer to as "VRT" in the future, is a way to compensate for loss of balance due to problems in your inner ear. It can help for certain kinds of vertigo and reduced inner ear function in one or both ears, which may be due to a number of issues.

So, why is VRT important? Well, those tiny vestibular organs can get injured or may not work well due to an illness. Once that happens, you may start to feel dizzy, experience vertigo, or lose your balance easily. Oftentimes, even people who balance with the help of a walker, for example, fall and injure themselves because of this. Sometimes, people want to cut corners and decide not to use their walker to reach something just a few feet away. But those few feet can be deadly to someone with osteoporosis and little to no balance. This is merely one example of many for why VRT is so important. Without the treatment, if your body doesn't heal normally, of course, your body will try to develop other methods of balancing, but these can be ineffective and can also lead to issues of their own. VRT trains the brain to process signals from other areas of your body in order to maintain balance.

Here's how VRT works: first, a physical or occupational therapist (PT and OT, respectively) take your medical history, and test your balance. They may also do some hand-eye coordination tests. They may also ask you some questions based on your lifestyle changes or the severity of your symptoms. The results from these tests and questionnaires get made into a treatment plan of how best to retrain your brain to help you regain your balance. Don't be alarmed if your symptoms get worse briefly after you begin VRT -- this can happen, but if you stick with the exercises, you will most likely be far better off than you were before. Sometimes, you may get sick and the symptoms can return, but simply returning to the exercises should bring you back to normal, so long as no additional vestibular damage has been done.

This information was taken from this website. If you have anymore questions, post them here or visit us at our website, which I linked to above!