“L’hippotherapy wants to participate in the functional and neurological rehabilitation of a person, using the movement of the horse. The patient is positioned on the horse’s back and follows its movement, which is similar to human walking.” introduces the creator of the Equiphoria clinic, located in Lozère, Hélène Viruega. By putting the patient in this movement, it stimulates different spheres of the brain. This is called “multimodal stimulation”.
As soon as the clinic opened in 2012, a doctor, Manuel Gaviria, and a research laboratory joined the project, with the idea of coming to prove the relevance of this treatment, which is still little known in France. Over the course of patients and studies, horse therapies demonstrate a efficiency in the cognitive, emotional and motor spheres of patients. “There is a very significant impact on brain plasticity, both from a functional and structural point of view”, explains the doctor.
Give autonomy to the patient
Equiphoria was built on the model of hippotherapy clinics in the United States. It brings together several types of health professionals such as psychologist, psychometrician, medical educator, sophrologist, chiropractor, physiotherapist or speech therapist, who work hand in hand with equine specialists. Each of these disciplines is exercised on the patient while he is in motion on a horse. The animals at the center are selected and trained.
The end goal is to help empower the patient, to give him tools so that he can interact with his helpers, his close environment. All the care is done at the patient’s pace and without aiming to come “stick to a form of normality: we don’t want to bring him back to what he was before (especially for acquired illnesses or accidents), but build him new patterns that serve him in his everyday life”, explains the centre’s creator, Hélène Viruega. We are mainly looking to rehabilitate cognitive functions such as attention, memory, concentration, communication, reasoning. But also to reinforce the patient’s symmetry, postural balance, alignment, endurance and muscle strength.
In general, patients come for one to two weeks, several times a year. “It is important to have periods without this treatment to assess the effects, hippotherapy is not intended to be a daily crutch”, explains Hélène Viruega. She points out that there is no set time for the therapy, that it adapts to the patient’s evolving needs.
A clinical trial for stroke victims
Not all pathologies are suitable for hippotherapy. The founder of the clinic explains that the patient has neurological diseases, or neurological consequences of other pathologies. The idea is to come and work around the development of the nervous system, cerebral palsy, but also to take an interest in the autism spectrum or even developmental delays. It also welcomes victims of accidents (trauma), strokes, neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s or multiple sclerosis.
Exactly, a clinical trial has just been launched, in partnership with the Bohringer Ingelheim laboratory. It is for stroke survivors. It will last 4 years and includes around sixty patients, half of whom will benefit from a conventional treatment approach and the other half will also receive horse therapy, in three cycles. Neurological tests will be carried out on each of them before and after the treatment. Another point studied: the quality of life of caregivers before and after hippotherapy.
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