Vestibular (balance) rehabilitation

Restore your balance with personalized vestibular rehabilitation at Montage Health. Depend on our physical therapists to help improve your symptoms and reduce your risk of falling.

Your body’s balance system

Good balance depends on your brain receiving messages from your eyes, inner ear (vestibular organs), muscles, and joints about your body’s position. These messages tell your brain when to coordinate muscle movements and adjust position to keep your balance.

Symptoms of a vestibular disorder

You may have a vestibular (inner ear) condition if you sometimes feel dizzy after sitting up in bed or rising from a chair quickly. Symptoms can happen at any age, but problems are more common in older adults. Symptoms include:

• Difficulty thinking or concentrating
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
• Hearing loss
• Imbalance, unsteadiness, or stumbling when walking
• Nausea
• Tinnitus, such as ringing, buzzing, or hissing in one or both ears
• Vertigo, a feeling like you or your surroundings are spinning

Aging, injuries, and illnesses can cause any of these problems.

Your therapy evaluation

During your first appointment with a specially trained physical therapist, expect to:

• Talk about your medical history and symptoms
• Have a physical exam with specialized assessment of the vestibular and balance system
• Set goals to improve your balance

Your care team will use advanced technology as needed during your evaluation to help determine what’s causing your balance problems.

Dizziness and balance therapy

An individualized rehabilitation plan can help you reduce symptoms and feel better. Your physical therapist may use approaches such as:

• Balance retraining exercises in a safe, supervised environment
• Gaze stability exercises that use eye-tracking techniques to reduce dizziness
• Head positioning changes
• Movements you can do at home to make yourself feel more comfortable and confident during everyday activities

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo

When you feel dizzy or have vertigo, calcium crystals in your inner ear may have detached and moved. This can cause dizziness, nausea, and vomiting — symptoms of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV).

A physical therapist can teach you the Epley maneuver, a series of head movements to reposition the crystals in your inner ear. You may be able to fully stop your symptoms in a few treatments.