How does mirror therapy work

One of the best perks is that you can do mirror therapy with or without the help of a therapist. Mirror therapy can help stroke patients overcome hand and arm paralysis, along with a host of other benefits. To illustrate how to do mirror therapy, we will explain how to use it for hand therapy. To work on your arm or leg, you just need to adjust the protocol for that limb.

You can reference our hand exercises for stroke patients to find other ideas for simple, therapeutic hand movements to try. Randomly wiggling your hand around may provide slight benefit, but the best results will come if you practice specific hand exercises repetitively.

Neuroplasticity is activated by repetition. The more you practice mirror therapy exercises, the more your brain will rewire itself. Practicing mirror therapy exercises on a consistent basis will help the brain rewire itself and, ideally, improve hand function. This is obviously not a clinically-proven result. Rather, MusicGlove was clinically proven to improve hand function in 2 weeks in patients that had enough movement to use it as intended without mirror therapy.

Overall, mirror therapy is a promising stroke rehabilitation method for stroke patients — especially those with hand or arm paralysis. This triggers mirror neurons in the brain to fire, which helps improve motor recovery after stroke.

Try to work with a therapist for at least one session to get acquainted with this therapy before you try it at home. Then, try doing it every day for at least 10 minutes.

Get our free stroke recovery ebook by signing up below! It contains 15 tips every stroke survivor and caregiver must know. I first came across FitMi on Facebook. I pondered it for nearly a year. I got a little more serious about ordering the FitMi when that all ended 7 months after his stroke.

He enjoys it and it is quite a workout! It is a wonderful product! His stroke has affected his left side. Quick medical attention, therapy and FitMi have helped him tremendously!

FitMi is like your own personal therapist encouraging you to accomplish the high repetition of exercise needed to improve. Many therapists recommend using FitMi at home between outpatient therapy visits and they are amazed by how much faster patients improve when using it.

This award-winning home therapy device is the perfect way to continue recovery from home. Read more stories and reviews by clicking the button below:. Neurological Recovery Blog. Support Group on Facebook. FitMi Full-Body Therapy. MusicGlove Hand Therapy. Sign up to receive a free PDF ebook with recovery exercises for stroke, traumatic brain injury, or spinal cord injury below:. Skip to content No products in the cart. He reported enjoying the treatment because he found it relaxing and he started noticing pain reduction.

Within several weeks his phantom pain had resolved completely and he was able to taper off all of his pain medication. The mirror should be positioned across the midline of the body as shown. Based on the success of this case study, we recently conducted a pilot study with 40 people with phantom limb pain to further test the idea that mirror therapy can be self-delivered at home.

Study participants were shown a brief demonstration of mirror therapy either in person or via a DVD demonstration and they were asked to practice the technique for 25 minutes daily. Participants self-treated at home with no therapist guidance however, participants did have the ability to call me or the study coordinator with questions.

Study findings showed that self-delivered mirror therapy is indeed effective for phantom pain. Almost half of the participants reported phantom pain reduction, with an average pain reduction of almost 40 percent. Ten participants reported phantom pain reduction greater than or equal to 40 percent. Two participants reported percent phantom pain resolution. Like all medical treatments, not everyone in the study benefited from mirror therapy, but the study results suggest that many patients may effectively self-deliver mirror therapy at home with a simple mirror.

Self-treatment with mirror therapy may reduce pain medication prescriptions and medical costs, thus reducing the cost burden of limb loss. Most importantly, successful self-treatment may reduce suffering and may improve quality of life. Like any behavioral plan, mirror therapy only works if it is practiced daily, and many people may have trouble staying on track with a daily practice plan.

In these cases, seek guidance from a local therapist. For therapists and individuals unfamiliar with the techniques, please refer to the Resources section of this article for additional information. Currently, global outreach efforts are underway to educate physicians and practitioners who treat amputees in developing countries about mirror therapy and its ease of use.

The End the Pain Project is a nonprofit organization that is providing mirror tool kits containing printed instructions for mirror therapy and nonbreakable mirrors — all free of charge to medical organizations and patients in Vietnam, Cambodia and Somalia.

Due to the limited availability of medical resources in many regions of these countries, self-delivered mirror therapy may help people with phantom pain from limb loss of all etiologies causes , including the large percentage of people in these countries who are survivors of landmines, military conflicts or other trauma.

Further research is needed, with larger methodologically-sound studies. The results indicate evidence for the effectiveness of mirror therapy for improving upper extremity motor function, motor impairment, activities of daily living, and pain, at least as an adjunct to conventional rehabilitation for people after stroke.

Major limitations are small sample sizes and lack of reporting of methodological details, resulting in uncertain evidence quality. Mirror therapy is used to improve motor function after stroke. During mirror therapy, a mirror is placed in the person's midsagittal plane, thus reflecting movements of the non-paretic side as if it were the affected side.

To summarise the effectiveness of mirror therapy compared with no treatment, placebo or sham therapy, or other treatments for improving motor function and motor impairment after stroke. We also aimed to assess the effects of mirror therapy on activities of daily living, pain, and visuospatial neglect. We also handsearched relevant conference proceedings, trials and research registers, checked reference lists, and contacted trialists, researchers and experts in our field of study.

We included randomised controlled trials RCTs and randomised cross-over trials comparing mirror therapy with any control intervention for people after stroke.

Two review authors independently selected trials based on the inclusion criteria, documented the methodological quality, assessed risks of bias in the included studies, and extracted data. We analysed the results as standardised mean differences SMDs or mean differences MDs for continuous variables, and as odds ratios ORs for dichotomous variables.

We included 62 studies with a total of participants that compared mirror therapy with other interventions. Of these, 57 were randomised controlled trials and five randomised cross-over trials. Participants had a mean age of 59 years 30 to 73 years.