Skip to main content

What We Treat

Dizziness and vertigo treatment in Morris Plains.

The room moving when you roll over in bed, then a whole day spent bracing against it. Not all dizziness is the same thing, and testing is what tells them apart.

BPPV Balance Vestibular Request My Appointment

Sound Familiar?

Does this sound like you?

  • The room spinning for twenty seconds when you roll over in bed
  • Reaching for the counter every time you stand up too quickly
  • Looking up at a high shelf and having to grab it to stay steady
  • Busy grocery aisles and scrolling screens leaving you foggy and off
  • Turning your head to back out of the driveway and losing your place for a second
  • Walking with one hand on the furniture, in your own house

Two or more? Keep reading.

Why It Happens

Not all dizziness is the same. That’s the whole problem.

Balance runs on three inputs. Your inner ear reports which way your head is moving. Your eyes report where the world is. Sensors in your joints report where your body is. Your brain compares the three, and when one of them disagrees with the others, you feel it as spinning, floating, swaying, or plain unsteadiness. BPPV is one of the most common causes. Tiny crystals come loose inside the inner ear canals and send a false motion signal when you move your head, which is why rolling over or looking up sets it off. That one is often resolved with specific repositioning maneuvers rather than exercises.

But dizziness is a symptom, not a diagnosis, and plenty of causes are not vestibular at all. Blood pressure, medications, dehydration, migraine, inner ear inflammation, the neck, and neurological conditions can all produce it. Physical therapy treats the vestibular and balance causes, and helps sort out whether yours is one of them. That is what a cause-first evaluation is for: positional testing, eye movement testing, balance and gait testing, done in an order that separates the causes. If your dizziness belongs to a physician instead, you will be told that plainly rather than treated anyway.

Physical therapist guiding a patient through vestibular and balance testing

The Honest Truth

Dizziness shrinks your world a little at a time.

If you keep waiting

  • You stop driving at night, then stop turning your head, then stop going out
  • Balance follows the avoidance: move less and you get less steady, not more
  • Fall risk climbs, and a single fall can change everything that comes after it

If you start now

  • Testing tells you which kind of dizziness you have, and which kind you don’t
  • If the testing points to BPPV, repositioning treatment can start that day
  • You get a plan with an endpoint: a real one, not an open tab of visits

You have been managing around this quietly, and holding onto the wall on the way past. Nobody regrets starting too early. Plenty of people regret waiting.

How We Fix It

The same four phases. Built for your balance.

Every plan has an endpoint. Here’s what the four phases look like for dizziness and vertigo.

Weeks 1–2

Pain

Settle the spinning down.

Positional testing finds the trigger first. If it points to BPPV, repositioning maneuvers address it directly, starting at your evaluation.

Weeks 2–6

Prime

Get the three systems agreeing again.

Gaze stabilization and graded head movement drills retrain your eyes, inner ear and neck to report the same thing at the same time.

Weeks 6–10

Perform

Make steady hold up under load.

Standing, walking, turning and reaching get progressed onto uneven ground and into busy visual environments, with strength work for your legs.

Weeks 10+

Prevent

Get your world back to full size.

Stairs, dark hallways, the grocery store and backing out of the driveway get tested before you finish, plus what to do if it ever returns.

When I first started I could barely bend my back without being in excruciating pain. After just a few sessions my back started to feel better and I had more mobility!

Shared by Courtney J. · Back pain

Related Conditions

Pain rarely stays in one place.

Compensation patterns often show up nearby. Here’s what else we treat.

1

Neck Pain

That 3pm headache that starts in your neck and ends your afternoon.

Learn More 2

Neurological Disorders

When the signal between brain and body needs retraining, not resting.

Learn More 3

Stroke

Relearning the movements that used to be automatic, one honest step at a time.

Learn More

Questions, Answered

What people ask before booking for dizziness.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and the evaluation is what tells you which. Physical therapy treats the vestibular and balance causes: BPPV, an inner ear that is no longer reporting accurately, poor gaze stability, neck-related dizziness, and unsteadiness after a concussion or a stroke. It does not treat dizziness driven by blood pressure, medication, dehydration, heart rhythm, or a condition that needs medical workup. Positional testing, eye movement testing and balance testing separate those groups, and that is the point of the first visit. If yours is not a physical therapy problem, you get told so and pointed toward the right physician instead of being treated anyway.

Some of it will bring your symptoms on for a short time, and that is on purpose. A positional test works by putting your head in the position that provokes the spinning, so it can be seen and identified. It usually lasts under a minute and it settles. You are supported on a treatment table the whole time, you are told what is coming before it happens, and you can stop at any point. Feeling briefly off afterward is common, so plan an easy ride home and a quiet hour if you can. The alternative, guessing without testing, is what keeps dizziness going for months.

It depends entirely on the cause, which is why nobody honest promises you a one-visit fix before testing you. BPPV often responds quickly to repositioning, and it can also take more than one round, or come back and need treating again. Vestibular loss and balance retraining work differently: those improve through repetition over weeks, because your brain is recalibrating. Either way your plan runs through four phases, Pain, Prime, Perform, and Prevent, and you always know which phase you are in and what is left. You work one-on-one with a Doctor of Physical Therapy, every visit.

Book Your Visit

Ready when you are.

Request a time and a real person calls you back, usually within one business day. No phone tree. No ‘someone will reach out.’ Just a plan.

  • Hours Mon, Wed, Fri: 9:00 AM –⁠ 5:00 PM
    Tue, Thu: 9:00 AM –⁠ 7:00 PM
  • (973) 453-0488 Prefer to talk now? Call us.
  • No referral needed in New Jersey

5.0 · 33 Google reviews

Typical response: within one business day

Step 1 of 5

So we know who to look for when you walk in.

A real person calls to confirm, usually within one business day.

No spam, just the details you need for your visit.

A sentence is plenty. We’ll ask the rest in person.

Everything look good?

  • Name Pending
  • Phone Pending
  • Email Pending
  • What’s going on Pending

Visit Us

Care this good, this close.

10 on 10 Physical Therapy

Take Me There (opens in new tab) Call Us