13/10/2023
How our nervous system works to enable us to do what we want is amazing. How can we support this? Read here of a couple of research studies. Being playful and curious in Awareness through Movement lessons will allow you to keep living your best.
Balance is a complex task. The human head is heavy so we use multiple systems to keep our heads upright and to move through space on our legs. These interrelated systems are the vestibular system, the visual system, and the proprioceptive (body movement sensory and muscle) system.
They send signals from the eyes, ears and muscles to the balance organs and the nervous system. When you turn your head, your eyes go in the opposite direction, the Vestibular Ocular Reflex. This lets us know that when we move through space, our bodies are moving, but the world is not.
If one of these systems is not functioning correctly, or the person has suffered a neurological event such as a stroke then quality of life can be severely affected.
A study into the effects of eyeball exercises on balance and falls in the elderly gave this conclusion. “These results indicate that eyeball exercise is beneficial to improve the fall efficacy as well as the balance of the elderly compared with functional exercise. Eyeball exercise would be useful to improve balance and fall efficacy of the elderly who have experienced a fall.”
A study looking into visual restriction in stroke patients said “In the field of balance training, the manipulation of visual input was more effective than the manipulation of standing surface to reweighting the sensory information.”
Showing the human brain is able to continuously create new pathways, neuroplasticity, throughout life.
1. The effects of eyeball exercise on balance ability and falls efficacy of the elderly who have experienced a fall: A single-blind, randomized controlled trial Jin-Hyuck Park, Soonchunhyang University, Archives of Gerentology and Geriatrics 68, November 2016
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309723317
2. Stroke Patients Showed Improvements in Balance in Response to Visual Restriction Exercise
Shima JANDAGHI, Ms,1 Nahid TAHAN, Ph.D,2 Alireza AKBARZADEH BAGHBAN, Ph.D,3 and Maryam ZOGHI, Ph.D4 Phys Ther Res. 2021; 24(3): 211–217.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8752821/
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