Dizziness/Balance

Is Dizziness Caused by Old Age? A Physical Therapist’s Perspective

Dizziness is a common complaint we hear from patients across all age groups. As physical therapists, we understand how unsettling and disruptive it can be, especially when it feels like your balance is betraying you. But is dizziness simply a part of getting older? The short answer is no, not entirely. While aging can influence balance, dizziness itself is not a direct consequence of old age. Let’s dive deeper.

What Causes Dizziness?

Dizziness is a broad term that people use to describe sensations like spinning (vertigo), feeling lightheaded, unsteady, or even as though they might faint. These symptoms can stem from various underlying causes, including:

  • Inner Ear Issues (Vestibular System): The inner ear plays a critical role in maintaining balance. Conditions like Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV), Meniere’s disease, or vestibular neuritis are common culprits for dizziness.
  • Circulatory Problems: Reduced blood flow to the brain, often due to low blood pressure, dehydration, or cardiovascular issues, can cause lightheadedness or fainting.
  • Neurological Conditions: Migraines, multiple sclerosis, or other neurological disorders may affect balance.
  • Medication Side Effects: Certain medications commonly prescribed for older adults can have dizziness as a side effect.
  • Vision or Musculoskeletal Changes: Weakness, joint issues, or even poor posture can affect spatial awareness and balance.

Why Does Dizziness Seem More Common with Age?

Aging itself doesn’t cause dizziness, but it can increase the likelihood of conditions that disrupt balance. For example:

  • Degeneration of the Vestibular System: Over time, the sensory structures in our inner ear may deteriorate, making balance less reliable.
  • Slower Reaction Times: Aging affects our ability to adapt quickly to balance challenges.
  • Increased Risk of Chronic Conditions: Older adults are more prone to conditions like hypertension, diabetes, or arthritis, which may indirectly contribute to dizziness.

How Can Physical Therapy Help?

As physical therapists, our role is to identify the root cause of dizziness and create an individualized plan to restore balance and confidence. Here are some approaches we use:

  • Vestibular Rehabilitation Therapy (VRT): For conditions like BPPV or vestibular hypofunction, we guide patients through exercises that retrain the brain and body to compensate for balance deficits.
  • Balance Training: We work on strength, stability, and coordination to reduce the risk of falls.
  • Education and Prevention: Understanding triggers and strategies to manage dizziness empowers patients to regain control over their lives.

What You Can Do

If dizziness is affecting your quality of life, know that help is available. Start by consulting your doctor or physical therapist to explore potential causes and treatments. Dizziness is not something you simply have to “live with” as you age.

Takeaway

While dizziness may become more common with age due to associated conditions, it is not an inevitable part of getting older. With the right care and guidance, you can regain your balance, reduce your risk of falls, and improve your overall quality of life.

If you’re struggling with dizziness or balance issues, our team at Rehab Advantage & Sports Medicine is here to help. Schedule an appointment today, and let’s work together to get you back on solid ground!

Chronic Headache Pain Is Holding You Back? Here Comes PT To The Rescue!

Stress-related headaches can severely impair your quality of life, preventing you from doing your job, spending time with your family, or going about your business in any way. As your headaches obstruct your ability to perform routine tasks, things can start to add up on your to-do list, and you may soon feel as if you’ve lost all control over your ability to complete even the most basic tasks—which can add more stress to your plate!

It’s a vicious loop that can leave you feeling like you have no escape, but there is a way out.

Physical therapy can help you to overcome stress-related headaches. Working with a physical therapist can help you identify exercises that reduce tension and help you find long-term relief from headaches, without the need for reliance on pain medications.

Why do stress-related headaches occur?

Stress can manifest in all sorts of ways, and finding ways around it isn’t always an option. Stress and physical tension can build from a wide array of activities, and some of those activities may be things that you genuinely enjoy doing, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t weighing on you, creating an added level of pressure that can manifest in painful headaches.

Stress is a common trigger for tension and migraine headaches. Rather than stressing about ways that you can outright avoid stress, it may be more helpful to think about strategies that will help alleviate headaches once they develop—as well as stress reduction techniques that may prevent the stress from reaching your head in the first place.

What can I do to relax and rid myself of stress?

If stress is producing headaches in your life, finding strategies to relax and minimize the stress build-up may be beneficial. Meditation, yoga, tai chi, and deep breathing techniques are some of the most prominent forms of stress reduction therapy. Listening to music, dancing, exercising, reading a book, or spending time with loved ones—especially pets—are all good ways to relieve stress.

Here are a few lifestyle habits that are shown to reduce stress:

  • Eat as healthy as possible. What you put into your body makes a big impact on what your body can handle. Try eating a diet that is rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains to help prepare your body for the stress you need it to handle.
  • Do what is feasible. While it sometimes feels that the only way to manage stress is to squeeze as much into a day so that you can tackle your endless to-do list, sometimes what you need is to simplify your life. Ask yourself what needs to be done and focus on that.
  • Get enough sleep. Sleep isn’t something that can be compromised when it comes to managing stress. Staying up late to get a task done is only going to lead to more stress. Try to get a sufficient amount of sleep daily so that you can handle what’s ahead.

Working on modifying your response to stressors is one of the most effective ways to help lessen the impact that stress has on your life. Changing your mindset and becoming more open to things that used to freak you out can make a big difference in how your body handles stressful situations.

Try making simple shifts in the way that you think about stressful events. Simply shift from considering something as “impossible” to “tough, but possible.” Look at ways that you can rise to a challenge versus how overwhelming the challenge feels.

How can a physical therapy plan help with stress headaches?

If you’re suffering from chronic headaches as a result of stress, physical therapy could be able to help you get some relief. Stress headaches are frequently the result of strain in the neck and back. Working with a physical therapist can assist you in identifying areas of stress, reducing discomfort, and improving your quality of life.

There are several strategies that physical therapists often use to help with stress headaches. These include:

  • Massage: Identifying areas that have tension build-up and targeting them with massage therapy can help to alleviate head pain.
  • Hot and cold therapy: Applying hot and cold compresses in an alternating rotation can help to reduce tension and alleviate pain.
  • Manual exercises: Your physical therapist can help you to identify exercises that will help you reduce tension naturally by improving your range of motion and stretching your muscles in a relaxing manner.

Call our clinic today

If you’re suffering from chronic headaches as a result of stress, physical therapy could be able to help you get some relief. Working with a physical therapist can assist you in identifying areas of stress, reducing discomfort, and improving your quality of life. Call our clinic today to learn more about our therapeutic techniques and how they can help you find much-needed pain relief!

Stress Headaches Putting a Damper on Your Day? Try Physical Therapy For Relief

Headaches of any kind can put a major damper on your day, sucking the fun out of planned activities and making it difficult to concentrate on work or anything else that requires your attention. While many people turn to over the counter medications as a means of addressing the lingering pain associated with headaches, these medications do very little to help the headache actually go away. If anything, they’re just a band-aid!

Headaches are pretty common. Most of us will have a handful of them a year on average. Unfortunately, some people experience them almost daily. The worst news that a large percentage of the population faces headaches at such a frequent rate that going a full day without a headache may start to feel like an unattainable dream. They also believe that their headache pain is something they must battle on their own.

Solving the mystery of how to overcome regular headaches comes down to understanding why the headaches are forming. In many situations, physical therapy can be used to reduce the frequency and severity of chronic headaches. However, you must be able to identify what is causing your headaches before physical therapy will be able to help. To learn more about physical therapy for tension headache pain, contact our clinic today.

What kind of headache are you suffering from?

There are several predominant types of headaches, and step one of treating your headache is identifying what type of headache you are experiencing. Common types of headaches include:

  • Stress-related headaches
  • Migraine headaches
  • Cluster headaches
  • Tension headaches
  • Nutrient-deficient / dehydration headaches

How physical therapy can help your headaches

Physical therapy for headaches will often incorporate a combination of massage therapy, guided stretching and muscle training, and additional therapeutic techniques, like hot and cold therapy and chiropractic adjustment.Working with a physical therapist can help you to address chronic pain associated with tension, stress-related, and migraine headaches.

Headaches can be identified based on how frequently they develop, the severity of the pain, and where in the head the pain is experienced. Physical therapy is often recommended for headaches that develop with regular frequency—at least once or twice per week.

Physical therapy is a much safer, healthier alternative to most of the treatment methods out there. If you have a choice between a natural and effective long-term solution to your pain, and a temporary fix that may cause harm to your health in the future, which one would you choose?

Why you should kick headache medication

While many people turn to medication for headache relief, medications merely dull the pain of the headache. It doesn’t address the source of the problem. It doesn’t make it go away. Most likely, you’ll be taking pain medication for the rest of your life without receiving long lasting relief.

So, what does physical therapy do for those suffering from chronic headaches? Physical therapy reduces the likelihood of headaches returning in the future by correcting the issue that caused the problem in the first place.

Therapists address the problem head-on (no pun intended!) by using targeted massage and stretching can alleviate tension in the neck, back, and shoulders.These methods can reduce the severity of tension headaches. Stress related headaches are often associated with tension, as well, while migraine headaches could be the result of an imbalance of hormones or nutrient deficiency. Your therapist will be able to determine if you’re dealing with either of these.

You can start working to reduce the pain of headaches at home by following a few simple strategies. Engaging in healthy activities like daily yoga practice can help you to alleviate tension, which can also help to reduce the severity and frequency of your headaches. Drinking plenty of water can help to reduce your risk of dehydration, which, like other nutritional deficiencies, can frequently lead to headaches.

Are you ready to get back to living a normal life?

With the help of a therapist, you can learn how to prevent or even eliminate tension and migraine headaches altogether. There’s no reason you need to continue scheduling your life around your headaches — you deserve much more than that!

Don’t deal with headaches any more often than you have to. Contact our clinic today to learn more about our therapy services, and how they may benefit you.

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Stress-Related Headaches Can Be Bothersome – Fortunately, PT Can Help

Discover Relief for Your Headaches Today!

Headaches are a common issue that can plague everyone from pre-teens to retirees. However, when recurrent tension or stress-related headaches make it difficult to get through your day, physical therapy may be needed to provide long-lasting pain relief.

Physical therapy can help you overcome stress-related headaches. In fact, as stated by Choose PT,  “There is effective treatment for almost every type of headache.” Working with a physical therapist can help you identify tension-reducing exercises and help you find long-term relief from headaches without the need to rely on pain medication.

Our experienced physical therapists have the skills needed to target the root cause of your headaches. Additionally, they can create a tailored treatment plan that is safe and effective. Tired of dealing with irritating and painful headaches? Keep reading to learn how to benefit from physical therapy.

Why am I experiencing headaches?

The most common type of headache experienced by adolescents and adults is tension headaches—sometimes referred to as stress-related headaches. This type of headache occurs when the muscles of the scalp and neck are tensed and then contracted.

Stress is the easy answer to this question, but in reality, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Stress can manifest itself in all kinds of ways; however, finding ways to deal with stress is not always an option.

Stress can build from a wide range of activities, and some of those activities may be things that you really enjoy doing, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t weigh on you, creating an added level of pressure that can manifest in painful headaches.

If you have tension headaches, you will most likely feel that the pain begins at the back of your neck before it rises to the top of your head and eventually causes pain and discomfort behind your eyes. It’s also common to experience tension headache pain in your cheeks, jaw, and even down your shoulders.

Some common causes of a tension headache include:

  • Anxiety and depression
  • Fatigue
  • Arthritis
  • Poor posture
  • Hair pulled back tightly
  • Stress

Other common types of headaches that may cause recurrent pain and discomfort include sinus headaches, caffeine headaches, migraine headaches, hormonal headaches, post-traumatic headaches, and cluster headaches.

Stress is a common trigger for tension and migraine headaches. Rather than stressing ways you can avoid stress, it may be more helpful to think about strategies that will help ease headaches once you develop—as well as stress-reduction techniques that may prevent stress from reaching your head first.

How can a physical therapist help?

Physical therapy can help to reduce the pain associated with headaches while working to restore proper function and a full range of motion in the neck and shoulder areas.

Typically, there are 2 different types of physical therapy treatments that are ideal for relieving chronic headaches, these include:

Active Therapies

  • Range-of-motion exercises
  • Low-impact aerobics
  • Pain relief exercises
  • Muscular releases
  • Strengthening exercises
  • Stretching

Passive Therapies

  • Soft tissue mobilization
  • Ultrasound
  • Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation or TENS
  • Ultrasound
  • Massage therapy
  • Alternating heat and ice therapy

Depending on the severity and cause of your headaches, our physical therapist may suggest a combination of physical therapy treatment methods to provide pain relief. However, because each person responds differently to headache pain, it’s important to keep in mind that there is no “one size fits all” treatment plan.

Because physical therapy targets the muscles and joints, it is an effective treatment option for those who experience tension headaches or stress-related headaches, and headache pain that radiates down into the jaw, neck, and shoulder areas.

Over time, our physical therapist aims to not only reduce your pain but hopefully prevent recurring headaches altogether. The primary goal of physical therapy is to not only provide pain relief but to increase mobility, improve posture, and help strengthen the muscles that control your neck, shoulders, and upper back areas.

With all physical therapy treatment plans, our patients will receive helpful educational information that will help them to complete pain relief exercises at home to supplement in-office visits.

Consult with a physical therapist today!

If you or your loved one have had recurrent headaches, you can find quick and effective pain relief with regular physical therapy.

Are you interested in learning more about the many benefits of physical therapy for tension headaches? Call us or visit our office in Dublin, GA today and be sure to schedule an initial consultation with one of our friendly physical therapists!