Vestibular Therapy in Redlands
You rolled over in bed and the room kept turning without you. Vertigo has a mechanical cause more often than people expect, and it can be tested for on the first visit.
What is vestibular therapy in Redlands?
You turned over in bed and the room kept turning without you. Or you tipped your head back to reach a high shelf and the ceiling slid sideways for ten seconds. Since then you have been sleeping propped up, turning your whole body instead of your head, and quietly avoiding the positions that set it off. Dizziness is exhausting in a way that is hard to explain to anyone who has not had it. Here is what is often going on. Deep in your inner ear are fluid filled canals that tell your brain which way your head is moving. In benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV, small calcium crystals drift out of the place they belong and settle into one of those canals. Every time your head changes position they send the brain a burst of motion that never happened. Your eyes react, the room appears to spin, and it settles within about a minute. Nothing is spinning. The signal is wrong.
Vestibular therapy is the work of finding out which part of that system is misreporting and then correcting or retraining it. Assessment comes first, because dizziness is not one problem. A doctor of physical therapy will watch your eyes during specific head and body positions, since the direction and timing of the eye movement points to which canal and which ear is involved. When the finding is BPPV, treatment is a repositioning maneuver, most often the Epley maneuver, a sequence of held head and body positions that guides the loose crystals back out of the canal. When the problem is a vestibular system that is under-responsive rather than misfiring, the work becomes gaze stabilization, which trains your eyes to hold a target while your head moves, and habituation, which repeats the movements that provoke symptoms in small controlled doses until your brain stops overreacting to them. Balance and walking retraining runs alongside both. There is more detail on dizziness and vertigo and on balance and gait disorders.
Who it's for.
Dizziness sends most people through several appointments before it sends them to physical therapy. These are the situations where vestibular therapy is the right room.
Short bursts of spinning tied to position
Rolling over, lying down, or looking up starts the room spinning, and it stops on its own within a minute. That pattern points to BPPV, which can be tested for directly and treated the same day with a repositioning maneuver. Many people notice a clear difference within the first visit or two, and we retest to confirm it rather than take your word for it.
Constant unsteadiness after an inner ear illness
After vestibular neuritis, labyrinthitis, or a concussion, the spinning may have stopped while you still feel off, foggy in crowded places, worse in a grocery aisle or scrolling on a phone. Gaze stabilization and habituation retrain the system to trust its own signal again. The goal is turning your head at normal speed without the world lagging behind it.
Dizziness that has become a fear of falling
You have started holding walls, taking stairs one at a time, and turning down invitations because you are not sure of your footing. Balance retraining rebuilds the ankle, hip, and stepping reactions that keep you upright, then grades them up as you steady. Progress here is measured by what you go back to doing, not by a score on a test.
What to expect in a session.
The first visit is about an hour, one on one with a doctor of physical therapy, and a good part of it is testing rather than treatment.
Your history, then positional testing
You describe what sets the dizziness off, how long an episode lasts, and what it actually feels like: true spinning, floating, or a lightheaded drain. Those details narrow the cause before anything else happens. Then you are taken through positional tests, including the Dix-Hallpike, while your therapist watches your eyes for the involuntary flicker that identifies the canal involved. Testing can briefly bring on your symptoms. That is expected, it settles, and it is the fastest way to an answer.
Treatment matched to what the test found
If the finding is BPPV, the same visit usually includes an Epley maneuver or a related repositioning technique: a series of head and body positions, each held while the crystals settle, walking them out of the canal. If the finding points to an under-responsive vestibular system instead, you begin gaze stabilization drills and a graded habituation program. Either way you leave knowing what to do for the next day or two and what to expect while it settles.
Retesting, then balance and real environments
Every visit starts by retesting whatever was positive last time, so you can see whether the crystals have stayed put or your tolerance for head movement has improved. As symptoms settle, the work shifts to walking with head turns, uneven surfaces, and the busy visual environments that were the hardest part. Most plans run 2 to 3 visits a week for 4 to 6 weeks, and straightforward BPPV often takes fewer.
Vestibular therapy treats dizziness coming from the inner ear and the balance system. Dizziness that arrives with a sudden severe headache, double vision, new weakness or numbness, slurred speech, chest pain, or fainting is not a physical therapy problem first: seek urgent medical care. Tell your therapist about neck problems, recent neck surgery, or a known retinal detachment before positional testing, since some maneuvers hold the head in extended positions.
Citrus Valley Physical Therapy is the best place for therapy. Everyone there is great, help full, they know exactly what they are doing and everything is so clean and disinfected.
Where to go next.
Dizziness and Vertigo
What causes the room to spin, how BPPV is told apart from the rest, and what treatment looks like.
Balance and Gait Disorders
When walking has become something you have to think about, and how that gets retrained step by step.
Fall Prevention
Screening, strength, and home changes for anyone who has started planning their day around not falling.
Ready when you are.
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