Balance and coordination are essential for you to move and orient yourself safely. When there is an impairment to your balance and/or coordination, you are at risk of falling.
Any disease, dysfunction, or injury to your cerebellum or your vestibular system can impact your balance and coordination. Neurological conditions, like MS, stroke, Parkinson’s, and more, often present with balance and/or coordination disturbances.
For example, if you have had a stroke, you may not have a sense of your arm or how to coordinate hand movements. If you are experiencing Parkinson’s Disease, you may have an overall loss of coordination which affects your balance.
What is balance?
There are different kinds of balance. Essentially, it is your ability to keep an upright position without falling, or being able to recover if you trip, whether you are standing, walking, or performing high-level activities like sports. while transitioning to different kinds of surfaces.
There are three systems that comprise your ability to maintain your balance. These systems all provide input to your brain to orient your body in space:
Somatosensory – This system is your ability to feel and process the ground underneath your feet. You may have to adjust your balance based on what kind of surface you are walking on- whether that be soft, uneven, or hard. If you have a change in sensation secondary to an orthopedic or neurologic injury, you may not be able to feel or adjust to how the ground is changing.
Vestibular – The vestibular system comprises your ability to know where your head is in space. It is inside of your ears and is affected by vertical, horizontal, or rotational movements of our head and body. This system contributes to an internal sense of how we are positioned in the environment.
Visual – The final system is your vision. This allows you to be able to orient yourself visually to your environment. Many people have difficulty keeping their balance in the dark.
What is coordination?
Coordination is your conscious and unconscious control of your body’s movements. This includes movements that you plan as well as reactions to stimuli. In both of these, coordination allows you to keep your balance.
It involves you having a good sense of what your body is doing and where it is at, so you can move in a tri-planar way without losing your balance. The more coordinated you are, the less likely you are to stumble or fall.
To learn more about the three planes of motion, read, “Game Ready: Get a Leg Up on the Competition.”
Coordination plays a role in many systems within the body, but it is integral to balance. If you have a coordination impairment, you might not be able to plan a big movement- whether that’s a step, squat, or lunge- or a small movement – fastening buttons, tying your shoes – which impacts your functional performance.
Coordination exists on a spectrum. If you are an athlete, you likely have a high level of coordination through training. However, especially following a neurologic injury, your coordination can be impacted and leaves a deficit for movements that need to be relearned.
Physical Therapy for Balance and Coordination
A Spooner Neurological Physical Therapist can measure your functional mobility, which can determine your risk of a future fall. Through these measurements, called outcome measures, we can adapt your treatment to what deficits we see to help mitigate fall risk.
Spooner Neurological Physical Therapists incorporate both specific task training and a high variety of balance challenges. Often, a deficit in balance and coordination means you don’t have an internal sense of your body. We use external cues in the task or environment, paired with physical challenges so that you can learn how to orient your body in space and challenge your brain to learn something new. For example, a therapist may provide a way for you to sense your body by using visual cues- like a mirror or an object- so you can externally orient yourself and learn how to internally sense this.
By keeping a high variety with high intensity in your treatment, your body learns more and more tasks. This helps improve your body’s ability to organize and process information that leads to improved balance and coordination.
If you have a neurological condition or want to improve your body’s ability to balance and coordinate movements, schedule an appointment with a Spooner therapist today!