Post Concussion Rehabilitation in Chubbuck
If you’re one of the many outdoor enthusiasts or action-sports fanatics living in the Pocatello area, you’re likely familiar with concussions on a basic level. To dig a little deeper, a concussion is a mild brain injury that is caused when the brain hits the rigid, bony structures of the skull.
As you might imagine, this trauma disrupts the brain’s thought processes, resulting in a range of potential side effects and problems. Most of the time, concussed patients who come to visit us at Custom Rehab are suffering from symptoms like neck pain, confusion, brain fog, sensitivity to light and sound, headaches, difficulty concentrating, and nausea.
Fortunately, the physical therapists at Custom Rehab are trained in a range of different post concussion rehabilitation options. Our goal at Custom Rehab is to keep the people in our community safe and healthy.
Learning About the Vestibular System
Here at Custom Rehab, we utilize cutting-edge physical therapy treatment plans to help our patients quickly and safely recover from a traumatic brain injury. We understand how important it is for folks in Chubbuck to get back into the swing of things quickly, which is why our therapists focus on therapy that also treats the vestibular system.
The vestibular system is that little sensory system in our ears that helps us keep our balance and maintain our spatial awareness. When a patient comes in with concussion symptoms, the canals and organs that make up the vestibular system have been impaired in some way.
With appropriate therapeutic techniques, we are able to retrain the vestibular system to give our brain correct neurofeedback, or proprioception, without generating an increase in symptoms. Rehabilitation to the vestibular system is required to get you back to your sport or recreational activity safely.
How Physical Therapists Can Treat Concussions
The physical therapists at Custom Rehab utilize vestibular rehabilitation because it gives us the ability to specifically tailor our concussion treatment to your unique side effects.
Every post concussion rehabilitation consultation begins with an assessment of the patient’s neuro, visual and vestibular function. This assessment is designed to inform the therapist as to the severity of the concussion symptoms. During this assessment, our physical therapist will test a patient’s balance and vision to identify how the injured brain is engaging with movement in the surrounding environment. The patient’s hearing and vision are also tested to identify if their senses were affected when they sustained a concussion.
The Effectiveness of Vestibular Therapy with Post-Concussion Syndrome.
Vestibular rehabilitation is such an effective concussion treatment because it is specifically designed to treat the reflexes and organs most affected by a traumatic brain injury. Generally speaking, our physical therapists will design a treatment plan with vestibular-based exercises that reduce dizziness, eliminate balance issues, and minimize migraines.
The therapists at Custom Rehab will work with you to stabilize your vision by retraining your eyes with different vision and balance exercises. Patients suffering from dizziness will work with a therapist on different habituation exercises. These exercises get patients back into the groove of doing habitual movements again so our patients are not dizzy when they bend over, turn their head, or move backwards.