For those who also experience dizziness, she teaches exercises that actually take patients through motions that make them sick. With repeated stimuli, therapists say, the nervous system adjusts. If you do it over and over, they learn how to do it again. The result is that the patient doesn't feel sick when going through similar motions outside of therapy. In other exercises, therapists make the nervous system work harder to heal itself by taking away prompts from other parts of the balance system.
Patients sometimes walk across a room with their eyes closed or stand on a foam pad.
Balance disorders aren't uncommon. According to studies done by the National Institutes of Health, dizziness is second to low back pain as the reason people see a doctor. An estimated 75 million Americans suffer from inner ear disorders sometime in their lifetime, and 500,000 people a year suffer from severe vertigo. Falls land many people in the hospital with broken bones. Lockett, a Hampton resident, has suffered from balance problems off and on for 15 years.