Recently, I worked with a couple patients who had experienced “vertigo.” We have worked with many patients with vertigo but this was very timely as I had just suffered from it myself.
I went swimming and every time I went under the water it felt like my ear was plugged which may happen once in awhile, but this was every time! I didn’t think too much of it until that night when I was in bed. I rolled over and all of a sudden my room was spinning. I had to grab my wife as I thought I was going to fall out of my bed!
Eventually it stopped. Right away I knew that I had a condition called Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) which can be caused by a crystal in our inner ear breaking away and then it stimulates the inner ear to make you feel like you are moving when you are not. Not fun!
It eventually went away but when I got up in the morning, I was very unsteady at first. After a few minutes, it went away and I was good for the rest of the day. I figured it was gone until I went to bed. Boom! The room was spinning again.
Knowing what to do to fix it, I did the maneuver to fix it. It got better and I no longer had it in bed. Finally it was gone. Until I laid down on a bench to workout. It was back! But this time it was different. This time the room wasn’t spinning, I was.
It was no longer BPPV but now it was central vertigo, meaning it wasn’t coming from a problem in my ear but from my brain.
The many days of having vertigo had thrown off my normal equilibrium. I now needed to fix this which I was able to fix because of my training. What would have happened if I didn’t have this training? I would still have the issue and I would more than likely be very scared as well not knowing what was causing it.
The recent patients that we saw and were able to help both had vertigo or dizziness. Both of them had seen other doctors and were told they had BPPV. The practitioners had tried the maneuvers repeatedly with no change. The problem was they were misdiagnosed. Neither of them had BPPV.
One was caused by cervicogenic vertigo. Her neck was out of alignment and she had super tight muscles. We corrected that and her vertigo went away.
The other had central vertigo which is caused by a part of the brain called the cerebellum. This had multiple causes such as anemia, poor blood sugar control, brain inflammation, and food sensitivities such as gluten intolerance. This was way more complicated than BPPV.
The point I am trying to make is that dizziness/vertigo has many causes. Some of which can be simple to fix and some can be very complicated. Having the training in Functional Neurology allowed me to correct my own problem but it also helped me to know that it was something that could be fixed.
Even knowing what I do about vertigo, I still had some fear. Until you have felt your world start spinning or that you are falling and you are not, you really don’t know what people with vertigo are going through.
I know that there are many people that are going through this and they don’t know where to turn. It’s scary and frustrating.
Let us help! Call our office today to see how we can help. 952-949-0676
www.valeowc.com
