Vertigo is a lot more common than people think. I am not going to give an exact medical diagnosis so please all the internet Google’ specialists and those who refer to wiki a lot please don’t bother to correct me as this is nothing but my Personal understanding and in no way is it a medical diagnosis. Quite often it is caused by a little tiny lump , often what is described as salt or grit in the inner ear, this upsets the signals sent to the brain. and causes the body to think it has lost balance. It is nothing to do with heights as I used to climb. a lot.
What you wouldn’t want to happen, is to get an attack of it if you are at any height at all or especially driving. I started suffering with it about 25 years ago. It is a strange sensation and varied in degrees of severity from person to person. In my case it ranged from the odd bout of dizziness to not being able to get out of bed for nearly a week. It started for me with a sensation of short bout of dizziness, which most people ignore, then I had sensations of falling and strangely I was sat down. Sometimes I got the spins and then a few months later I had a bout where I had the spins and things in the room were spinning as well , like almost falling through a kaleidoscope and it felt like I was as well.
I went to Doctors, I was taken into hospital for check after check. Now all this sounds like I went through hell, but the truth of the matter is that some of these bouts lasted seconds, some a couple of hours up to ONE where I had to spend 5 days at home. Age has nothing to do with it but it does seem to occur more often with people over 40. That said my friends daughter 26 at the time and a very fit young lady was incapacitated with it for nearly 3 weeks. There is a well recognised procedure which sometimes gets rid of it called the Epley manoeuvre . To get rid of the symptoms, a doctor lies you on a bed twists your head left to right and vice versa a couple of times and it usually dislodges whatever is causing the blockage and an hour or so later you are cured but few GP’s will do it. There is some American on the internet who does it to himself and demonstrates how to do it but you need a flat table or medical couch.
I tried it all, in the end I had a long chat with my GP. He convinced me to go and see a friend of his who was an audiologist. I went to see him, he examined me, gave me a hearing test and then asked me about lifestyle etc. He put it down to a mixture comprised of the amount of flying I did (which in those days was a lot) I flew at least twice a week on business and sometimes more. He also asked about the amount of coffee I drank (which is now and was then very little) a couple of cups a month. He asked about the amount of tea I drank which is and was ridiculous at least 6-8 cups a day. Finally he asked me to try and switch to Decaf Tea which I did slowly over a couple of months.
That was about 8 years ago, I have never had an attack of Vertigo since. So in my case I am convinced it was a mixture of a lot of flying and too much caffeine in the tea. This shaggy dog story may help you and then again it may not. I hope it does because it is an awful thing to suffer with, there is no known cure other than the epley manoeuvre and even that doesn’t always work ! You are therefore totally helpless if you get an attack of it and it lasts any length of time.
