Hey everybody, this is Dr. Pat again with the Springfield Wellness Center and today we’re going to be talking about vertigo, and going over a few different exercises you can do to help with your situation.
Vertigo is a condition that affects a lot of people. And it’s something that can really have a profound effect on someone’s quality of life. Because vertigo usually means dizziness, unsteadiness, balance issues, it can cause nausea, it can cause vomiting, it can cause just a lot of deeply uncomfortable symptoms for people. And for many people, this is their reality, this is something they live with constantly. And so these are the people we’re hoping to reach with these kinds of videos just to help people understand what it is that can be done to help the whole situation around vertigo.
For this video, we’re going to go through three simple exercises you can do from the comfort of your home, from the office anywhere, just things that can be done to help with stabilizing the head, stabilizing the neck, and also helping to incorporate different movements of the head to help vertigo, symptoms start to subside a little bit. So the first couple exercises are postural exercises, trying to keep things really simple here.
First one is going to be chin retraction.
So with this, we’re trying to strengthen the muscles around here and trying to bring more stability to our neck in our overall posture, that’s going to keep our head forward and keep everything in good alignment there. So to do a chin retraction, which you do, is going to look up at about 45 degree angle. And then we’re going to pull the head backwards like this forwards and backwards, forwards and backwards. So with this, again, we’re strengthening the muscles in this area here, it’s going to help with posture, because it’s going to keep the head directly over the shoulders, as opposed to jumping forward.
The second exercise that we’ll go through is just some rotational exercises without moving the head too much.
So with vertigo, you want to make sure we’re not moving the head side to side too much because it can sometimes make things worse. So for this, you’re going to place one hand here, and you’re going to rotate, but resist with the hand. So rotating and resisting, it’s going to strengthen the supporting muscles in the neck, bring more stability to the neck, and the upper, especially the upper part of the neck here.
The last exercise we’re gonna go over is called the Brandt Daroff habituation exercise.
What this is designed to do is help reestablish good positioning of those crystals within the inner ear and help the symptoms of vertigo subside. So, for this exercise, there’s a series of movements we have to go through. So the first one that we’re going to do, I’m gonna shift over a little bit here is you’re going to look to the right, and immediately lay on your side with the head upwards here. Now for someone who has vertigo, this could make them very dizzy. And you want to lay here until you don’t feel dizzy anymore, and then add 30 seconds to that. If this doesn’t make you dizzy at all, you simply lay here for 30 seconds. And once that time is done, you’re going to sit back up and bring the head forward again, then what you’re going to do is you’re going to go to the other side. So we’re going to look this way. And we’re going to lay back like this. Again, if you’re dizzy, you want to stay here until you’re not and then add 30 seconds to that. If you’re not dizzy, you simply stay here for 30 seconds, and then come back and then back to the front here. Okay, so you’re gonna go through those five times on each side, and then see how you feel from there. Okay, that’s the brand therapy, habituation exercise.
So if you’re having vertigo, and you’ve never heard of these things, it will be worthwhile trying them. It’s not going to do any harm. It can only help you in this case here. So hope you found this information useful. And we’ll see you on the next video.
