A Key To Vestibular Rehab: Habituation.

A Key To Vestibular Rehab: Habituation. Explaining Why We Want to "Make it Worse" The goal of habituation is to decrease the brain's sensitivity to certain stimuli and to help the individual become desensitized to the triggers of their symptoms.

During vestibular therapy habituation, individuals may be guided through a series of exercises and activities that challenge their balance and coordination. These exercises are designed to help the brain adapt to the sensations that typically cause dizziness or vertigo, ultimately reducing the frequency and severity of these symptoms over time. The key to habituation is recovery time and level of provocation. Monitoring the level of how much your symptoms are increasing, and making sure your symptoms fully recover before starting again is how your brain will learn to adapt. If we continue to push to the point where it can't recover, then it will reinforce the brain's avoidance of that position. If don't push the symptoms enough, then the brain will stay comfortable and any deviation from that comfort level, will result in dizziness, nausea, and the like. Your therapist can help guide you through this delicate balance until you are able to move without symptoms coming on. A home exercise program will be provided that should be tailored to your specific triggers at a frequency individualized to you, thus trying to determine what exercises and prescribe repetitions and frequencies yourself can make your symptoms worse.