Remediation of
Injuries
The Learning Breakthrough Program™ addresses brain processing issues that are critical to injury
rehabilitation by improving sensory
integration coordination that directly impacts motor
control skills so that one's internal control system is
balanced and repaired along with the outside (or physical)
repair.
The Learning
Breakthrough Program was originally designed to improve the
functioning of the balance system as a means of improving
intellectual processes. When it was first developed, a
high-level understanding of the neurological functioning of
the brain was not yet available, so the first evidence to
support its value was purely observational: children
with learning disabilities began to function (and succeed)
academically.
Since then much more investigation has
been made and we now understand that the impact of balance
stimulation (and proprioception) exercises is due to the
central role balance plays in the working of the brain.
The vestibular system (balance system) can be thought of as
the root on which higher brain functions grow and plays a
basic and vital role in our lives.
Joint stabilization
is the ability of muscles that have been appropriately
activated to stabilize a joint. The process of joint
stabilization/joint positioning is critical to athletic
performance and injury prevention. Often times an athlete who
has suffered multiple ankle injuries will assume that he or
she has ‘weak’ ankles. This may not be the case considering
the fact that the athlete is probably in excellent physical
shape. The more likely scenario is that the joint positioning
systems (proprioceptive processes) that the brain uses are not
positioning the joint properly in the midst of athletic
movements. Over time, this poor joint positioning will lead to
injury. By improving the brain’s ability to integrate all the
information being received from the various senses and
formulate appropriate movement responses the chances of poor
joint positioning and injury are reduced.
Because it
is so important, the body naturally makes compensations to
maintain a sense of balance and over time these compensations
are learned and become “normal” for the body. In addition,
when the body is injured, damage can be done to the balance
system that is more difficult to perceive and measure than the
injury itself. However, in order truly to return a
patient to 100%, the balance system must be reorganized in
tandem with the correction of the body.
Therefore,
there are two ways to think of balance as it pertains to
Osteopathic or Chiropractic applications. First, a
subtle inefficiency in the balance system causes an individual
to compensate. Over time, those compensations grow into
habits, and as the habits become permanent, the body
changes. Chiropractic or Osteopathic work can correct
the symptoms of that change, but unless the practitioner works
with the underlying cause, i.e., balance, the solution may be
impermanent. Second, an injury can cause the body to
change. Over time, those changes can have an impact on
the efficiency of the balance system. Extending
Osteopathic or Chiropractic work to the balance system enables
the practitioner not only to improve the physical effects of
the injury, but also to correct the impact that injury may
have had on the balance sense.
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