Improve Your Movement, Function, and Independence
A neurological disorder can affect the way you walk, balance, coordinate movement, use your arms or legs, and complete everyday activities. These changes may make work, exercise, household tasks, or independent movement more difficult. If a neurological condition is affecting your function in West Valley City, Tooele in Northpointe, Tooele on Main Street and Grantsville, UT, physical therapy at Meier & Marsh Physical Therapy can help you work toward improving the abilities that matter most to you.
Our physical therapists look at how your neurological condition affects the movements and skills you rely on each day. By assessing areas such as walking, balance, strength, and coordination, we can identify which abilities to target in treatment.
Understanding Neurological Disorders
Your nervous system includes your brain, spinal cord, and nerves. Neurological disorders can affect the way these structures control movement, balance, coordination, sensation, and other physical abilities.
Depending on the condition, you may experience changes in:
- Strength
- Balance
- Coordination
- Walking
- Sensation
- Mobility
- Endurance
- Ability to use an arm or leg
- Ability to perform everyday movements
The effects of a neurological disorder can vary considerably from one person to another. Your diagnosis is important, but so is understanding exactly how the condition affects your ability to function.
Physical therapy does not treat the underlying disease process of every neurological disorder. Instead, rehabilitation addresses movement and functional problems that may be improved or better managed through treatment.
How Neurological Disorders Can Affect Daily Life
Changes in movement, balance, or coordination can show up during many parts of your normal routine.
You may have difficulty:
- Walking around your home or community
- Getting up from a chair
- Using stairs
- Maintaining your balance
- Getting in and out of bed
- Reaching or using an arm
- Performing household activities
- Exercising
- Completing work-related tasks
- Participating in hobbies or family activities
Some movements may take more effort or require more concentration than they once did. Others may become difficult because several abilities, such as strength, balance, and coordination, need to work together.
Understanding those specific challenges helps us decide which skills deserve the greatest attention during rehabilitation.
A Detailed Assessment of How You Move and Function
A neurological diagnosis alone does not tell us which activities you can perform or where you are having difficulty. Your physical therapist evaluates the individual abilities involved in your movement.
Depending on your condition, this may include:
- Strength
- Balance
- Coordination
- Walking
- Range of motion
- Sensation when appropriate
- Movement control
- Ability to change positions
- Transfers such as getting up from a chair
- Endurance during physical activity
- Movements related to your everyday activities
Your physical therapist may also observe how several of these abilities work together during a specific task. For example, difficulty walking may involve a combination of strength, balance, coordination, sensation, and movement control.
This gives us a clearer picture of which abilities can become the focus of treatment.
Practicing the Skills You Want to Improve
Neurological rehabilitation often involves repeatedly practicing specific movements and progressively increasing their challenge.
Practice is purposeful. If getting out of a chair, climbing stairs, or walking across your yard is difficult, treatment can break that activity into the abilities involved and then work toward performing the complete task more effectively.
Your treatment may include:
- Strengthening for movements that require greater force or control
- Balance training for standing and moving under different conditions
- Gait training to work directly on walking
- Coordination exercises to improve control of specific movements
- Mobility exercises when limited movement interferes with function
- Functional training for standing, transfers, stairs, reaching, or other tasks
- Endurance training to build your ability to sustain physical activity
- Task-specific practice for movements you need at home, work, or in the community
- Education and home exercises to provide opportunities for continued practice
Building Skills for Greater Independence
Progress in neurological rehabilitation can mean different things for different people.
For one person, it may mean walking farther. For another, it may mean standing up with less assistance, improving balance while dressing, returning to exercise, or moving around the home more independently.
We use the activities you need and want to perform to help guide progression. As your abilities change, the challenge of treatment can change with them.
Clinical Expertise Focused on Your Abilities
At Meier & Marsh Physical Therapy, we look beyond the name of your neurological condition to understand how it affects you.
Our physical therapists identify the movement skills that are limiting your independence and determine which can be targeted through rehabilitation. We explain what we are working on and connect treatment to the activities you want to improve.
We love our patients, and we treat you like family. That means taking the time to understand what greater independence would look like for you and helping you work toward it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Work Toward Greater Movement and Independence
A neurological condition may affect certain physical abilities, but your rehabilitation should focus on what you can work toward.
Contact Meier & Marsh Physical Therapy today to schedule an evaluation for neurological disorders in West Valley City, Tooele in Northpointe, Tooele on Main Street or Grantsville, UT. We can assess how your condition is affecting your movement and daily activities, identify the skills that should be addressed, and help you work toward greater independence.
Your Next Steps…
- Request An Appointment
- Receive A Custom Treatment Plan
- Work Hard and Progress In Your Recovery
- Recover & Enjoy Life Pain-Free
