Can Physical Therapy Help with Vertigo? 

If you experience vertigo, otherwise known as the sensation of filling that you or your environment is spinning, then you might have balance issues. So what can physical therapy in Bowie, MD do for you? Well, first let’s talk some more about vertigo.

People who experience vertigo often have the issue of feeling dizzy, or lightheaded. Vertigo and lightheadedness can have different causes and different treatments but often occur together. Vertigo can affect people of all ages but it is very rare among children and very common in adults over the age of 20. However after you’ve hit the age of 65 and over, balance problems along with vertigo are much more dangerous because older people have a lot more balance issues and are more fragile so if they fall it could really hurt them.

Physical therapy can help you manage vertigo and dizziness and help you live your life with a higher quality of life.

Oftentimes vertigo is caused by the vestibular system which is the inner part of your ear that is responsible for your balance. There are a number of conditions that can cause vertigo such as inner ear infections or disorders, migraines, tumors such as acoustic neuroma, surgery that removes or injures the ear or its nerves, a hole in the inner ear, and stroke. This is not a complete list of everything that can cause vertigo as it can have other causes.

Along with vertigo, you may also experience nausea, vomiting, sweating, abnormal eye movements, ringing in one or both ears, and difficulty walking because you are not able to balance.

The most common form of vertigo is a benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, BPPV is an inner ear problem that causes short periods of spinning when your head is moved in certain directions. Sometimes people have something called visual vertigo which is a dizzy or unsteady feeling in stimulating visual settings; which makes activities like walking and store aisles and driving in traffic hard.

Physical therapy and Bowie, MD like the ones available at the Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab can help you by evaluating what is causing your vertigo and creating a plan. This plan will be tailor-made to you, focusing on your goals as you live life with vertigo. Exact treatment is going to depend extremely on the type of vertigo and the cause.

Your physical therapist is going to help get you moving and manage the vertigo, and treatment is often going to include specialized head or neck movement that you will be taught to do. There will also be exercises to help get rid of your symptoms; and certain types of vertigo and conditions have very specific treatment plans.

If you still have issues after vertigo stops then your therapist can target these problems specifically because they were obviously not caused only by the vertigo. So if performing an activity or a chore at home causes you to become dizzy then your therapist is going to be able to teach you how to do them in a different way to reduce or stop the dizziness.