054 - Dizziness, Vertigo, and Vestibular Rehab - Interview with Dr. Ashley Contreras of VizStim

The Autoimmune Doc Podcast w/ Dr. Taylor Krick

I see a lot of neurological cases that experience symptoms like dizziness, vertigo, lightheadedness, inability to tolerate motion, flashing lights, sounds, etc. Many of these people are not local to my area, and they are all wondering "What else can I do to help myself get better?" so I am always looking for new ways to help them.
While I focus primarily on looking deeper into underlying mechanisms, root causes, neurotoxins, pathogens, gut health, autoimmunity, etc, one thing that anyone who is experiencing these symptoms can do is VESTIBULAR REHABILITATION, so we have recommended VizStim kits to many of our clients.
My guest on today's episode is Dr. Ashley Contreras, the creator and founder of VizStim. She is a physical therapist who specializes in vestibular issues and vestibular rehab, and throughout her 15-year career has developed this amazing kit of exercises to help people retrain their vestibular system. It's an inexpensive, easy-to-use, at-home kit with a wide variety of different exercises, journals, and levels of difficulty designed to walk through your progress as you are retraining your vestibular system. I've used it with my kids, it's super easy to use, easy to teach, and as long as you are willing to do the exercises and put in a few minutes of rehab each day, it is AWESOME.
The vestibular system is a complex system in the brain that detects how your head and body are existing in relation to their surroundings - are your eyes level with gravity, are you moving, what position are you in, etc. When those signals get disrupted, from concussions, infections, neurotoxins, spinal subluxations and other injuries, etc, even the slightest miscue in signaling can make your body feel uneasy, unstable, nauseous, like the room is moving, or can fire to the amygdala and create a lot of anxiety or fear. When this system is disrupted, it can be retrained and rewired. I discuss the vestibular system quite a bit more in podcast number 47 (Brain Regions), and we discuss this much more in this podcast episode, so listen to the episode to learn more, and check out VizStim , and follow VizStim Recovery on social media for some great tips and tricks!