The vestibular system is made up of three components: vestibular (ears), visual (eyes), and somatosensory (information sent to the brain from pressure, touch, movement, position, temperature, and pain arising from the muscles, joints, and skin). If a disease or injury damages your vestibular system, you will have a vestibular disorder. To avoid experiencing this, there are numerous rehabilitation techniques that can be practiced to strengthen the vestibular system and improve symptoms of a vestibular dysfunction. One of these methods is by doing habituation exercises. This kind of exercise is prescribed to patients who often experience an increased dizziness when they move around, especially when they make sudden head movements. Note that their dizziness increases when they are in a visually stimulating environment. In habituation exercises, the patient is repeatedly exposed to a visual stimuli or specific movements that usually trigger the patient’s dizziness. The patient’s level of dizziness is expected to improve over time, as his brain learns to adapt and ignore the unnecessary signals it receives from the vestibular apparatus, or balance portion of the inner ear.
Another way of strengthening one’s vestibular system is through gaze stabilization exercises. By doing these exercises, one can control his eye movements so that his vision will be clear when doing a head movement. These exercises are appropriate for those who are having trouble seeing clearly while moving, because they see their background bouncing while they are trying to read or identify things around them. Doing these exercise programs are particularly beneficial for patients who have damage to both inner ears and no vestibular function, and to those who are having balance problems.
An essential part of our balance system, aside from the vestibular and visual factors, are our somatosensory receptors. These nerve endings in our feet called “proprioceptors” send information to the brain, which allows the body to control balance and make the right pattern of movements. One way of strengthening and restoring our proprioceptors and improving our balance is by using proper footwear and custom orthotics or shoe inserts. By using such, it can help distribute our body weight evenly, maximize cushioning, and minimize the undue stress in the bones and muscles at the back and lower part of our body.
It is also encouraged to practice proprioception training to improve one’s balance, knee strength, and walking speed on different terrains, since strength training exercises were found to enhance neuromuscular functions and reduce pain.