Dizziness and PT: Finding Balance
Dizziness is common in people over 20 and it can be a big problem in your daily life. Vertigo occurs due to a disconnect between the signals being sent to the brain from the visual and vestibular (inner ear) systems about head and body movements. When these systems are out of sync, you experience a sensation that the room is moving or spinning around you.
Vertigo is more than just a brief feeling of dizziness or spinning. You can also experience severe and incapacitating nausea, vomiting, sweating, and abnormal eye movements. Symptoms can last anywhere from a few seconds to several days. The good news is that dizziness often has treatable causes, and your physical therapist can be the perfect person to help.
Understanding Dizziness
Dizziness isn’t a specific problem. It’s a symptom that can come from a lot of different issues. Feeling dizzy most commonly comes from issues with your inner ear, but it can also come from your vision, joint or muscle issues in your neck, migraines, changes in blood pressure, head injuries, or other neurological problems.
Common Causes of Dizziness
- BPPV (Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo) – Caused by displaced crystals in the inner ear canals
- Vestibular neuritis/labyrinthitis – Inflammation of the inner ear
- Meniere’s disease – Excess inner ear fluid buildup
- Head and neck injuries
- Migraines
- Side effects of certain medications
How Physical Therapy can Help Treat Vertigo
To understand dizziness and how a PT can help, you have to know a little about how balance works. Your brain uses information from your inner ears, your vision, and input from your joints about their position and movement to keep you balanced and stable. Typically all of this information paints the same picture for your brain. If your brain gets conflicting information – say your inner ear sends different information than your vision and your joints – that often results in a feeling of dizziness, unsteadiness, or vertigo.
Vestibular rehabilitation is a specialized form of physical therapy designed to retrain the brain to process signals from the visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive (body awareness) systems together. It uses specific head, body, and eye exercises to desensitize the triggers of vertigo and improve balance and stability. As the exercises become more challenging over time, the brain learns to compensate for the vertigo triggers.
Your treatment plan will vary depending on what your PT finds. Your physical therapist will ask questions about your history. They will also perform testing on the systems that help you stay balanced to figure out the causes.
PT Treatments for Dizziness
- Exercises: Your PT may prescribe specific exercises to improve your balance, strengthen or stretch specific muscles, or to help retrain your brain to interpret sensory information. These can include gaze stabilization exercises which help your eyes and inner ears work better together, habituation exercises that help your brain get used to different types of input, and balance training on different surfaces.
- Canalith repositioning maneuvers (CRM): If your dizziness is caused by benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), a specific type of inner ear problem, your therapist may perform maneuvers to reposition tiny crystals within your ear canal, alleviating your vertigo. They can also teach you how to do these at home.
- Walking exercises
- Fall prevention education
- Education: Your therapist will educate you about your condition, how to manage dizziness, and exercises you can perform at home. They may also help you modify activities that cause dizziness, or train you on ways to work through it.
In addition to treating the underlying vertigo, physical therapy helps patients overcome the fear of movement and activity avoidance. This often occurs when one first experiences symptoms of vertigo. Improved balance and stability as a result of physical therapy allows patients to safely return to their normal daily routines and activities.
Dizziness doesn’t have to interfere with life. Physical therapists can help reduce your dizziness, improve your balance, lower your risk of falls, and improve your confidence in your daily activities. If you’re struggling with dizziness, spinning sensations, imbalance, or other symptoms of vertigo, ask your doctor about vestibular physical therapy. With the right treatment plan, you can find long-lasting relief and get your life back in balance.