How do we keep our balance?
What causes balance problems?
What is balance therapy?
Who can benefit from balance therapy?
How do we keep our balance? | |
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In order to maintain our balance we must be able to accurately sense how our bodies are positioned in space and whether or not we are off balance. We use three of our senses to help keep our balance. Vestibular sense from organs in our inner ears tell us which way is up and how our head is moving. Sense of touch and position, especially in our feet and ankles, tell us what the ground is like and how we are leaning. Sense of sight lets us see which way is up. We also need to be able to move our bodies quickly enough and with enough force to correct any imbalance our senses inform us of. Two body systems work together to keep our balance in this way. Our brain, spinal cord, and nerves process sensations and use reflexes to quickly respond to changes in our body position. Muscles, joints, and bones take the signals from the nerves to move the body to keep our balance. |
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What causes balance problems? | |
Problems with any one of the involved body systems can lead to balance problems. This can be the result of a specific disease process such as diabetes damaging the nerves in the feet (peripheral neuropathy), a stroke damaging the brain, or severe arthritis making the joints stiff and the muscles weak. It can also be the result of several minor impairments working together to disrupt your balance. As we age our reflexes slow, our vision and inner ear function fade, our joints stiffen, and our muscles weaken. A decline in our ability to keep our balance is a normal part of the aging process. However, falling or being afraid of falling is not a normal part of aging and should be discussed with your doctor and investigated by a physiotherapist who is experienced with balance therapy. |
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What is balance therapy? | |
Balance therapy is a specialized type of physiotherapy designed to challenge, strengthen, and retrain the body systems responsible for maintaining our balance. It involves exercises designed to target those areas of body and brain function. If you were training to run a marathon, you would do better to practice running rather than lifting barbells. If you were training to be a better football player, practicing football would help you achieve your goal more effectively than practicing basketball. For the same reason, general strengthening exercises in physiotherapy are less effective at improving your balance than are exercises which specifically challenge your ability to keep your balance. Because the exercises which best challenge your balance systems are those exercises which quite literally make you almost lose your balance, safety is of primary concern. It is important to have a skilled and experienced physiotherapist who knows how to guard you from falling while still giving your body and brain the freedom of movement to be challenged by the exercises in order to best benefit from them. The job of the balance therapy specialist is to find the appropriate exercises to best challenge your body and brain, always monitoring your safety and your progress and advancing the difficulty level as your balance improves and those exercises which had been challenging to you before become easier over time. |
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Who can benefit from balance therapy? | |
Anyone who is afraid of falling and older people who have had falls should see a balance specialist. Other factors known to be associated with risk of falling include answering “yes” to three or more of the following: I feel my legs are not as strong as I would like Keeping your balance involves so many body systems that if a small improvement can be made in just a few of these systems your overall balance can improve. Even if you have had permanent damage to one of these systems, such as peripheral neuropathy, you can still see improvement in your balance by performing exercises which target the other sensory systems to help your brain learn to use them more effectively. |