Bill Daniels explains how vestibular system dysfunction in your inner ear affects posture, balance, vision, and coordination, and can cause back pain, scoliosis, plantar fasciitis, and vertigo. He walks through the anatomy and offers a quiz to assess your vestibular health.
Hi, I'm Bill from Beyond Fitness Online. Today I wanted to dive in a little deeper about why it's important to work in the other systems in your body besides just the muscles when you're exercising. If you've followed me for any period of time or you see any of the other videos on this channel, you'll notice that I'm always incorporating the vestibular system, and I really think that the vestibular system is Super important to train and really dysfunctional at some level for a lot of people. And I wanted to kind of get into why it is that way today. So your vestibular system, in case you don't know, is this tiny little area, this little apparatus that you have in each ear. It's way buried down deep in the bone, and it is responsible for telling your brain which way gravity is pulling you and which way your body is moving. And it's got a bunch of different parts to it, and I get into those in other videos. But what I wanted to tell you was, if it's not balanced and it's not working properly, even just one little piece of it, then that's going to lead to your brain not being able to tell what's going on exactly, and it's going to end up compromising your movement. And this can really radiate throughout a lot of different things. For example, If your vestibular system lives here and it tells you, okay, I'm turning my head this way or I'm turning my head this way, right? Then it—that's working. But what if this vestibular system is not firing quite right? And that's going to tell your brain, okay, well, this is going to be more what vertical is. Gravity is pulling me more that way instead of that way. So now what's going to happen is your visual system is going to say, no, no, no, this is straight. And all of a sudden now you're ending up with that S-curve. And that's how scoliosis happens. That's how kyphosis happens. So that's how you get these spinal issues. It reflexively tensions the muscles that hold your spine in good posture. So if your brain isn't getting the appropriate feedback as to which way gravity is pulling you, you're gonna end up with altered muscle tensions. You're gonna end up with poor posture. You're gonna end up with back pain. You're gonna end up gripping the ground harder. So you could end up with things like plantar fasciitis. Plantar fasciitis. You're gonna end up with your eyes and the reflexes in your eyes that are controlled by the vestibular system aren't gonna be firing right. And so you could end up with visual issues. All of this can end up causing balance problems and in extreme cases, even vertigo. So these are all things you wanna avoid. It goes even deeper than that because the vestibular system also connects with the cerebellum, which is a part of your brain right back here, which is responsible for balance and for coordination. So you can end up with coordination issues. You can end up with gut issues because your vestibular system works very closely with a part of your brain called the insular cortex. And the insular cortex is basically how your brain knows what's going on in your gut. So that can lead to bloating, digestive issues, all kinds of other problems. And that can lead to other health issues and elevated stress. So it's really important to make sure that we're taking care of the vestibular system so that we can continue to move properly. Now, if you want more information about this, I'll leave a link in the description below. I wrote a blog that really dives in deep into the details of this. And I'm also on my website at Beyond Fitness Online. I'll leave that link below as well. If you go there, you'll see a pop-up. And you can take a little quiz to see how well your vestibular system is functioning. And I look at all of those personally and I'll email you back with my thoughts on that and maybe the best place for you to start. And let me know what you think. Let me know if you found this helpful, if this was enlightening to you. Let me know if any of this resonated with you. Leave it in the comments below. And if you haven't already, go ahead and subscribe to my channel. I post new updates every Friday. And until next time, live healthy.
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