Central processing of information in the brain is essential for balance

Central processing of information in the brain is essential for balance

It is obvious you need brain power to keep your balance. The two-legged human is not inherently stable. If your brain stops working, you will collapse into a heap on the ground. To be able to sit, stand, keep your balance, walk, run and jump, are learned skills.
Even sitting up straight requires an immensely complex series of calculations, carried out microsecond by microsecond.
Instructions are sent from the brain down the nerve fibres to the muscles which control your head position, neck and spine, allowing you to stay stay upright.
The instructions are constantly updated by feedback from the joints and muscles themselves (proprioception) from the skin which feels the pressure of the seat, from the eyes which can see where you are, and from the inner ear which knows whether you are tilted backward, forward, sideways or moving.

Standing Exercise and Moving about exercises for Vertigo

Standing exercises
Move from sitting to standing up, and back again, with your eyes open, 20 times.
Repeat with eyes closed.
Throw a small ball from one hand to the other, above eye level, 20 times.
Throw the ball from hand to hand at knee level, 20 times.
Turn around 360 degrees on the spot, eyes open.
Repeat with eyes closed.
As vertigo lessens, speed up.
Moving about exercises (special caution advised)
Walk across the floor with your eyes open 20 times.
Repeat with eyes closed.
Walk up and down a slope with your eyes open 20 times.
Repeat with eyes closed.
Walk up and down steps 20 times with your eyes open.
Repeat with eyes closed.
Any game or exercise that involves stooping, turning, bending, stretching and hand-eye coordination - for example bowling, tennis - is good for improving your balance.

Head and sitting exercises

Head exercises
With your eyes open, bend your head forwards, then backwards, 20 times. Start slowly at first, then speed up.
With your eyes open, turn your head from side to side 20 times. Start slowly at first, then speed up.
As the dizziness improves, repeat the head exercises with your eyes closed.
Sitting exercises
Shrug your shoulders 20 times.
Turn your shoulders to the right and left 20 times.
From the sitting position, bend down and pick up objects from the floor, and sit back up again. Repeat 20 times.

Eye movements and Vertigo

One of the reflexes connected with balance is not learned, it is present at birth. That is the automatic control of eye movements during head turns, known as the the vestibulo-ocular reflex. In health, if you turn your head, your vision does not normally turn into a blur. You will focus very briefly on one view, then another, then another, until you have completed the head turn. To do this requires rapid, accurately controlled eye movements. Eye movements are controlled by muscle activity, under the control of an image stabilization system which receives information from the inner ear. There are good survival reasons why we have evolved this system. If you are a monkey swinging through the trees, you need to keep the ability to focus on the next branch while moving. Otherwise, pretty soon you'll be a dead monkey.
The control of eye movements is assisted by predictive reflexes from the inner ear balance organ.
If the brain receives a signal that you are turning rapidly to the right, it will automatically trigger a series of reflex actions designed to keep your vision in focus.
Your eyes will sweep across from right to left, at the same rotational speed as the surroundings, helping them to fixate on one point in the rotating view.
Just before the eyes reach their limit of movement within the eye socket, they are then sent flicking very fast to the right - much faster than the speed of rotation. For this split second only (instead of the whole length of time of the head turn) vision would be blurred.
The eyes then start another sweep to the left.
This repetitive horizontal jerking movement of the eyes, with a slow phase to one side and a fast phase to the opposite, is called nystagmus.
Nystagmus can be seen in normal life if you are sitting on a roundabout.
Nystagmus is usually seen in patients suffering acutely from vertigo.
If you have nystagmus, it will look to you as though your surroundings really are moving.
As well as the inner ear telling you that you are spinning, if you look at your surroundings with nystagmus, your eyes confirm that either you or the world around you is spinning.
Because the reflex control of eye movements is built in to the brainstem at such a low level, it can be difficult to stop nystagmus and vertigo from happening during very rapid head turns in someone with a damaged inner ear.
http://www.entkent.com

Cawthorne-Cooksey exercises

Eye exercises
Look up and down 20 times. Start slowly at first, then speed up.
Look from one side to the other 20 times. Start slowly at first, then speed up.
Hold up one finger at arm's length. Focus on it. Move it slowly in towards you and out again 20 times.
Head exercises
With your eyes open, bend your head forwards, then backwards, 20 times. Start slowly at first, then speed up.
With your eyes open, turn your head from side to side 20 times. Start slowly at first, then speed up.
As the dizziness improves, repeat the head exercises with your eyes closed.
Sitting exercises
Shrug your shoulders 20 times.
Turn your shoulders to the right and left 20 times.
From the sitting position, bend down and pick up objects from the floor, and sit back up again. Repeat 20 times.
Standing exercises
Move from sitting to standing up, and back again, with your eyes open, 20 times.
Repeat with eyes closed.
Throw a small ball from one hand to the other, above eye level, 20 times.
Throw the ball from hand to hand at knee level, 20 times.
Turn around 360 degrees on the spot, eyes open.
Repeat with eyes closed.
As vertigo lessens, speed up.
Moving about exercises (special caution advised)
Walk across the floor with your eyes open 20 times.
Repeat with eyes closed.
Walk up and down a slope with your eyes open 20 times.
Repeat with eyes closed.
Walk up and down steps 20 times with your eyes open.
Repeat with eyes closed.
Any game or exercise that involves stooping, turning, bending, stretching and hand-eye coordination - for example bowling, tennis - is good for improving your balance.

The balance control area of your brain acts like the pilot of an aeroplane, making adjustments to the controls to keep your body in balance. The pilot of an aeroplane does not need instruments to fly straight and level if the weather outside is good, and he can see the horizon. Even if the aeroplane instruments are faulty and give a false reading, it doesn't have to cause a problem with the flight, provided that
The pilot knows to ignore the faulty instrument,or the faulty instrument gives a predictable and stable mis-read, and the pilot knows by how much, and in what direction, so that he can compensate for the error.
He will always find it much easier if he has other independent sources of the necessary information
If, however, the aeroplane has faulty instruments and the pilot tries to fly through cloud, he is then forced to rely on those faulty instruments.
If he then takes those false readings at face value, believes them to be true, and makes adjustments to the controls accordingly, he will almost certainly end up crashing.
This is what happens to a person with false signals from a damaged inner ear who tries to walk in the dark across uneven ground. source-http://www.entkent.com

important factors for balance

The inner ear is not the only source of information to help you balance. You also receive information from:
The eyes - you can see which way up you are, whether you are moving and in which direction.
The soles of your feet (if you are standing) or the seat of your pants (if you are sitting down). You can feel where you are.
All of your joints and muscles - including the joints in your neck, back, legs, feet, arms and hands - have sense-organs in them which send signals up the nerves and spine, telling the brain what position they are in. You don't need to look to see whether your arms are outstretched or by your side - they tell you where they are. This position-sense is known as proprioception. Proprioception is reduced in various medical conditions including arthritis and diabetes. The information comimg from the eyes, skin, muscle and joints is integrated with the information coming from the inner ears and processed in the brain.
If there is plenty of information coming from the eyes, skin and joints, you do not really need to rely on information from the inner ear to help you balance.
If the information coming from the other sources is reduced, lost or confused - for example in the dark, on soft or uneven ground - your brain has to rely more on the information coming from the inner ears.
This is why your balance will be worse in the dark, on soft or uneven ground, if you have a problem with your inner

How damage to the inner ear causes vertigo

Vertigo can result from many causes, but is most often caused by damage to the balance organ of the inner ear. As well as the cochlea for hearing, the inner ear contains a very sensitive organ, the vestibular labyrinth, designed to help maintain balance.
The vestibular labyrinth is made up of three semicircular canals - lateral, posterior and superior. They join together at the vestibule.
The semicircular canals are arranged at right angles to one another. They can detect and measure movements and acceleration in all three planes of space.
The inner ear balance organ can also detect the direction of gravity.
The right and left balance organs work together, constantly sending signals via the audiovestibular nerves to the brain, telling you which way up you are, whether you are moving, turning, etc. and in which direction.
When your inner ear balance organ is damaged, it sends a false signal to the brain.
Vertigo results when the brain believes the false signal and acts accordingly.
The commonest condition to affect the inner ear is labyrinthitis, which means inflammation of the labyrinth and causes severe rotatory vertigo.
Labyrinthitis often causes permanent and irreversible damage to the inner ear. The recovery that follows is not because the inner ear gets better, but because the brain learns to ignore, adjust to or compensate for the false signal.
The brain learning to make allowances for the faulty information coming from the inner ear is known as central compensation.

Vertigo is a particular form of dizziness or giddiness. Rather than just feeling faint or light headed, it is an illusion of motion.
The sufferer feels as though they, or their surroundings, are turning, spinning, falling, or some other form of movement when in fact they are not.
Like sea-sickness, vertigo is often accompanied by nausea and vomiting.
Vertigo does not mean fear of heights, that mistake was spread by Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film "Vertigo".
After acute vertigo settles, it is often followed by dysequilibrium, an uneasy feeling of imbalance, as though one might be about to fall over.
Vertigo and dysequilibrium can be very frightening, but do not usually signify any serious or life-threatening disease.

Sterling jumped to a 26-year high versus the dollar for a third day on Wednesday, vaulting $2.02 and showing no signs of vertigo so far against a broadly weak dollar that stayed near record lows versus the euro.

The greenback, dogged by troubles in the U.S. high-risk mortgage market that could hurt the wider economy, also weakened against the high-yielding Australian and New Zealand dollars.
Trade was expected to be relatively quiet, however, due to the U.S. Independence Day holiday.
Key central bank decisions on interest rates are due on Thursday from Britain and the euro zone. Fifty-six of 70 economists polled by Reuters expect a 25 basis point UK rate hike to 5.75 percent, widening the gap over the Federal Reserve's 5.25 percent policy rate.

"Sterling is maintaining its leader status amongst the majors with regards to outperformance against the generally weaker dollar...We are likely to see sterling continuing to move higher ahead of the BoE meeting," said Ian Stannard, senior foreign exchange strategist at BNP Paribas.

"As far as the U.S. is concerned the dollar remains under pressure across the board. Financial markets' uncertainty is starting to increase and the spillover effects from subprime are starting to have some knock on effects on other markets."