About Vestibular Therapy

The core of what we do at VRT Los Angeles is help patients manage or eliminate a wide array of symptoms, including dizziness, vertigo, gaze instability, and physical imbalances. Our licensed therapists help rehabilitate your body to be able to move properly and get you back to your daily life with zero to minimal fall risk.

Rehabilitating balance issues is called vestibular therapy, and it involves a fair bit of technology and techniques that retrain your body, brain, and vestibular system, the part of your body responsible for balance and spatial orientation.

Also called vestibular rehabilitation therapy (VRT), the core of vestibular therapy focuses on alleviating balance-related problems caused by a disruption in the link between your ear and brain.

We work to rehabilitate your brain and body back to proper function, or help promote what's called compensation. Compensation is when your body shifts its senses around a bit to compensate for the loss of other functions. For example, a blind person can become more acutely aware of touch and sound to help them get around.

VRT compensation works by recalibrating the part of your brain that controls balance. It's a natural process, but can be hindered due to injury, illness, a tumor, or ageing. It's not always easy for your body to repair its vestibular system, making VRT necessary for many.

VRT is a meticulous testing and training process. We communicate with your doctors and neurologists, and gently put you through a series of tests to make an accurate diagnosis and provide the best care. A misdiagnosis can lead to potentially harmful therapies. We put in the legwork to ensure we put you on the path to healing and stability.

An accurate diagnosis means identifying the root cause of your symptoms. Our evaluation involves delving into your health history, performing various testing methods to screen and assess your symptoms, gauge muscle strength, range of motion, coordination, posture, balance, and walking ability.

Based on your diagnosis, we'll guide you through a customized rehabilitation program utilizing one or more of the following three therapies: habituation, gaze stabilization, and/or balance training.

Habituation is for patients who suffer increased dizziness due to quick movements or changing positions. Often specific motions are triggers. Habituation is also used for patients whose dizziness is triggered by visually busy environments, like watching TV or walking across a shiny floor.

Habituation provokes the dizziness reaction in a controlled environment so we can train your brain to ignore certain disorientation signals from the inner ear.

Gaze stabilization is for patients with vision problems eyeglasses can't fix. Said patients experience a world that appears to jump around independent of the patient's movements, or lack thereof. Gaze stabilization works to help control eye movements using methods that match the disorder.

Balance training is for patients who struggle to walk without falling over. Like with gaze stabilization, balance training methods the disorder, all of them with the end goal of helping patients successfully walk across uneven ground and in the dark. Appropriate exercises also help improve standing, bending, reaching, turning, and more demanding activities safely.

VRT Los Angeles utilizes the latest cutting edge technology and techniques proven to produce great results. You'll undergo various exercises and tasks designed to help correct your symptoms. Sessions include training for vision stability, posture, or balance retraining. We also guide you through stretching and strengthening exercises, walking exercises, neck mobility/stretching exercises, and even fitness exercises.

Your rehabilitation program is designed specifically for you and only you. We don't do cookie cutter treatments. We also match care to the pace you can handle, setting you up for the most success.

The outcome of minimizing and/or eliminating symptoms varies from patient to patient. Variables include the amount of damage the vestibular system has sustained, the type of damage, and how well and regularly a patient performs therapy exercises.

Restoring balance and stability takes commitment. Every patient program involves home exercises, too, and the better you stick with it, the better the outcome. It can take months to notice improvement as your brain builds and repairs balance-related neural pathways. Most notice improvement within three months. However, it can take up to a year to recover in some cases.

It's easy to overlook the emotional impact of vestibular disorders. The struggle to function through daily life leads to a ton of anxiety and depression. If you're emotionally struggling to cope with your vestibular disorder, we'll connect you with the right counseling resources.

We also educate you on what's going on. Part of the frustration is often the unknown. We provide information about how to deal with your challenging symptoms and what you can expect and you progress. Knowing is often half the battle.