Bumping into Walls After Vertigo?
If you’ve had a vestibular dysfunction, you probably have imbalance, but may also find that you have difficulty navigating around obstacles such as around corners, around people in a crowded area, or around aisles in a grocery store.
There’s a reason for this! Your vestibular system helps with spatial orientation and navigation.
If you’ve had a disruption to the vestibular system such as a vestibular neuritis, it will weaken one side, and the discrepancy between that weakened side and the intact side will cause dizziness, typically described as a spinning sensation with imbalance. The brain will begin to compensate for that weakened side and you will notice that your vertigo begins to improve, but you may still have some vertigo with quick head turns and will also notice difficulty with your balance that will persist.
The vestibular system detects motion and is very sensitive to it, especially for how small of an organ it is (about the size of your thumbnail). The vestibular system detects linear motion such as forward and backward movement you might experience in the starting and stopping of a car. It will also detect acceleration if you start to move faster. The same thing occurs when moving up and down an elevator, the vestibular system will sense those changes. The vestibular system will also detect angular velocity such as bending forward or spinning around.
In order to be able to navigate around obstacles, you need to be able to know where you are in space, which is why we have our vestibular, visual, and somatosensory systems to help us. If there is an impairment with one of those systems then your ability to navigate through your environment will be impaired. Think about if your vision was affected, you would have much more difficulty finding your way around, or if you lose sensation in your feet it would be harder to feel where you are.
All of these systems have to coordinate together to measure how fast you are moving, when you will approach an object, and when you need to move to avoid it. If the calculations are off slightly then you may notice you are bumping into obstacles. While the vestibular system is measuring velocity (direction and acceleration) in linear and angular planes, it is also sending signals throughout the body for what we call postural control. The vestibular system helps to coordinate your muscles to keep you upright, sending signals if it senses a change in position. The vestibular system’s effect on postural control is inhibitory, this means that it prevents certain muscles from firing to keep your movements as efficient as possible. If you have a vestibular dysfunction, then the inhibition will be gone, resulting in excessive trunk sway with postural control (excessive upper body movement when standing and walking).
Vestibular rehab can help improve your brain’s ability to utilize sensory information and more efficiently calculate your movements to avoid obstacles!
