BalanceWear® a Weighted Vest for Ataxia

Linda Snider shared how the BalanceWear Weighed vest is able to help with her Ataxia.

 

“As a person with spinocerebellar ataxia, a progressive, debilitating neurologic disease, the BalanceWear vest has been instrumental in helping me improve my daily life.

The strategically weighted vest offers a counterbalancing system and with the assistance of the vest, I am able to perform everyday tasks with increased confidence. Walking, particularly on stairs or uneven ground, used to fill me with anxiety, but now I feel safe and secure. Although the reasons are unclear, writing and speech are improved, and being able to communicate better provides me with a sense of belonging.

I got the vest right before I went on a European vacation. I was able to do the subway system in Paris and London because of the vest.

Although the vest doesn’t help everyone with a balance disorder, it has helped almost everyone I’ve told about it. They had never heard of the BalanceWear vest from their own physicians or physical therapists. They heard about the vest through word of mouth and have been shocked by the results. It’s my hope that this information becomes more readily available and can be given to the people it can help, not by other people that use the vest, but by medical professionals.”

The weighted vests are custom fit and you need an evaluation by a certified physical therapist. That’s the first step. You need to get an appointment with someone familiar with the vest and how to weight it properly. There are PT’s across the country that can help. Next, the vest is not a one and done device. The vest needs adjusting over time. Therefore, you need to be able to go back to the certified PT every few months to get the weights moved. As you change, the weights change too.

I’ve attached a YouTube video and I talk about the vest and show it too. It can be informative. Linda’s Story

 

Linda Snider MD

Co-Founder Nebraska Ataxia Foundation

 

The BalanceWear Breeze is one of the Motion Therapeutics Vests that enables strategic placement of weights in a vest. The Breeze is meant for lighter weights and can hold up to 2.5 pounds.

In a recently published study researchers found improvement in standing stability simply by applying weights strategically on the torso using the Balance-Based Torso-Weighting: BBTW Technology.  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31749254/

Motion Therapeutics provides training to clinicians in the BBTW technology. For more information on the background and research please access a two-hour webinar for free. www.balanceweareducation.com

Please forward the education on to your colleagues, therapists and clinicians to spread the research in the strategic application of weights to a vest for improvement in stability and mobility.