Did you know that falls are the second leading cause of accidental death in the United States? Unfortunately, dizziness, vertigo, and disequilibrium can occur for many different reasons, at any age, and are often very disabling.

So why physical therapy? If the brain cannot rely on the information it receives from the vestibular system, a person's ability to maintain posture and coordinate balance can become overly dependent on vision or on the information received from the muscles and joints (proprioception).This can lead to developing new patterns of movement to compensate for the change and to avoid head movements that are apt to create symptoms of dizziness and nausea. Unfortunately, these types of adaptation can result in headache, neckache, muscle stiffness, general fatigue, and a decrease in the ability to retrain the brain to adjust to the vestibular problem, making the symptoms much worse.

Let the trained physical therapists at Atlas help you by performing a comprehensive evaluation to determine the cause of your symptoms or reasons for your falls. Using the result of this evaluation, the therapist will develop an individualized treatment plan that will include exercises to be performed both in the clinic and at home and that combine specific head and body movements with eye exercises. In most cases, balance improves if the exercises are correctly and faithfully performed. Resultantly, muscle tension, headaches, and fatigue will diminish, and symptoms of dizziness, vertigo, nausea, and/or disequilibrium will decrease or disappear thus reducing your fall risk and greatly increasing your quality of life.