by Dr. Martin P. Rutherford, DC |
Vertigo, dizziness and balance problems are not just a problem with the inner ear, or your sinus. This is highly important for a practitioner to understand if they want to resolve and eliminate vertigo, dizziness and balance problems. In fact, balance disorders are a complex combination of neurological, hormonal, immune, mechanical and nutritional problems.
There are several different kinds of balance disorders. There is vertigo that is associated with spinning and vertigo associated without spinning. There is ataxia, which is likened to clumsiness. There is disequilibrium, where your balance is off and you bump into things. There is visual vertigo, where you walk into an area and you see something that overwhelms your brain and makes you feel like you’re spinning. There is Ménière’s disease that causes imbalance, hearing loss, nausea and tinnitus (ringing in ears). Then, there is just plain dizziness, car sickness and more. These are all individualized variations of the same neurologic and metabolic mechanisms.
Here’s the key to solving balance disorders: always keep in mind that these disorders are not simply inner ear problems. Good balance and steadiness is a result of a complex interaction between a few different systems; your visual system and what your eyes are seeing; your muscle joint feedback system and what your body is doing; your vestibular system (your inner ear) and what your head is doing.
When all of these systems are playing together nicely, and they calibrate properly, you will have good balance. When they do not work properly, your balance goes to the wayside.
The areas of the brain involved with balance disorder, and the biggest cause of balance disorders, are problems with the cerebellum; the frontal lobe and parietal lobe of the brain, not just the inner ear. This is called the Functional Disconnection Syndrome (FDS), for reasons that will soon become apparent.
Your cerebellum is at the back of your brain. It is right at the base of your skull. The cerebellum coordinates everything: your balance, your body movements, your spine movements, your eye movements and even your thought processes.
The parietal lobe of the brain must synthesize, or put together, all of the information coming from your eyes, inner ear, muscles and joints. This coordination of brain function creates the “map,” so your body and nervous system know where you are, where you’re moving, what direction you’re moving in and how fast. When one of these areas starts to weaken or deactivate, it does not pull its weight; all parts of the brain including the cerebellum, frontal lobe, parietal lobe, and inner ear disconnect, and you become imbalanced.
To reconnect this system, the newest research and brain and metabolic technologies found that you can “reset” the brain with numerous, targeted, specific brain-based “activations,” or exercises, which can strengthen the weakened areas and bring the synchronized neurological areas in balance.
However, the involved brain cells in the “weakened” areas must be healthy in order to achieve balance. Neurons become unhealthy due to various stresses, traumas and improper fuel to the cell; the main fuel being glucose. Imbalanced glucose mechanisms must be investigated. Generalized inflammatory processes also destabilize brain cells. There are more causes of generalized inflammatory processes that can affect the brain than this article can cover, but the metabolic mechanisms, along with blood sugar, must be properly evaluated with blood, saliva, urine and sometimes fecal tests, which can be corrected to get the brain cells in proper metabolic balance. Once this is achieved, through dietary alterations and natural supplementation support, further non-drug methods can be utilized in order to activate the weakened brain cells; it will bring corrective long-term balance to the system and to the balance disorder sufferer.
References:
- Hesham MD, Samy. Dizziness, Vertigo and Imbalance. www.emedicine.medscape.com.
- Dieterich, M. Central vestibular disorders. Dept. of Neurology, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Langenbeckstrasse 1, 55131, Mainz, Germany.
For more info, contact Dr. Martin Rutherford at Power Health & Wellness Center at (775) 329-4402 or visit online at www.RenoBBT.com.
