Understanding Vestibular Rehabilitation Exercises
The management of patients with chronic equilibrium disorder or dysequilibrium can be challenging and yet also among the most rewarding experiences for physicians and clinicians. The vestibular rehabilitation exercises provide these patients with successful alternative management strategy. Allowing them to return to normal lives. Patients no longer have to be told to learn to live with it. Vestibular rehabilitation exercises techniques provide an adjunct to medical and surgical management of patients with vestibular disorder. For some disorder, it is the primary treatment.
How The Vestibular Rehabilitation Exercises Work
In order to understand how vestibular rehabilitation exercises works and the underlying corrective mechanisms, it is important to remember that the primary role of the vestibular system is to tell the brain where the head is. Quite simply, the vestibular system is our internal reference telling the brain how our head is orientated in space. The visual and somatosensory system, on the other hand, are external references, providing our brain with information about the movement and stability of the world around us. Working together in agreement, the harmonious integration of these sensory modalities provides us with normal equilibrium.
By the late 1980 and into the present, the work of Herdman, Shepherd, Telian, and smith wheelock has produced dozens of anecdotal accounts of the benefit of vestibular rehabilitation exercises for a wide variety of vestibular and balance related problems. Likewise, new treatments for benign paroxysmal positional vertigo ( BPPV )have come from Semont, Freyss, Vitte, Eply, Parness and Jones.
The Generally Vestibular Rehabilitation Exercises
There are three generally accepted models to explain why therapy works: Adaptation : The central vestibular system and the brain learn to adapt to the imbalanced signal coming in from the impaired peripheral vestibular sensory receptors. Substitution: The role of compensatory shift when one or more sensory systems is lost or damaged is well known. Liberatory / Repositioning / Desensitization : There are several different approaches in the management of otolith dysfunction, commonly referred to as benign positioning vertigo. The basis for the success of vestibular rehabilitation exercises is the use of already existing neural mechanisms for adaptation, plasticity, and compensation in the human brain.