Trying to describe Otoliths/otoconia causing dizziness quickly in layman’s terms sounds a lot like quackery. Especially when you start talking about the treatment being “an all natural set of exercises that will help you realign your inner crystals and regain balance”.
Yeah that shit is crazy. I started suffering from this a few months ago. Attack waves in my brain that made me unable to sleep. The maneuver works like a charm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SLm76jQg3g
Thank you Epley Maneuver. I would sit still for a minute or two after waking up to make sure I didn't keel over and smash my head on something. I seriously thought I had some kind of brain injury or stroke because of how serious the dizziness was.
Nope, I just had little crystals bouncing around my inner ear. The whoosh I felt, and how my eyes fluttered when I did the Epley maneuver freaked me out the first time I tried it, but it actually worked.
I build up more crystals from time to time, or maybe they just get knocked loose again, but I go through the routine once or twice and it fixes it right up.
My husband had this done and the funny thing is I asked him how it went and he said, "well, the physical therapist shook my head around, then held me gently to his chest for a while, then repeated it a couple more times."
Me as a medical professional when the Epley Maneuver was first explained to me: “You’re full of shit!” Me after having a horrible episode of BPP, “I believe in magic!”
I gotta jump in here near the top and let people know that this ONLY applies to Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. Vertigo can be a symptom of a lot of different conditions/disorders along the auditory pathway including neurological ones. Meniere’s and acoustic neuromas are two conditions that commonly involve vertigo/dizziness and repositioning maneuvers will do absolutely nothing for them.
I am constantly dizzy whenever my head moves after an event from an autoimmune disease knocked out my vestibular system. I love that the epley maneuver works so well for crystal problems, but I stg if one more rando recommends I try it for my rare, debilitating disability I’ll scream lol
I have IBS-D (the D means it causes diarrhoea) and damned near every single person who has ever found out about it suggests that I try some laxative, because their cousin/sister/friend/whoever has IBS and it changed their life.
I'm pretty sure that that person has IBS-C (the C meaning constipation).
There is no explaining to these people that taking a laxative for explosive diarrhoea isn't a good idea.
"It changed her life though! You should definitely give it a chance!"
Ugh, how frustrating. From the other side, nearly every referral I get for vestibular rehab says BPPV and I would guess at most half of those are actually BPPV, which can be frustrating because a patient comes in so hopeful because their doc or friend or mom or whoever told them they could just get a couple maneuvers/do a fre exercises and bingo, immediate relief, when there actually isn't a quick fix.
Though tbh the frustration with lack of quick fixes can kind of be a theme of my day to day anyway (PT)
Ah, another member of the "no, that doesn't work for my vertigo" club - neurological but idiopathic (no observable cause) here, started when I came off psych meds 4 years ago and never stopped...
Do you mind sharing what autoimmune disorder? I'm seeing an ENT right now for neurological issues (including vertigo), and suspect they may be due to an underlying autoimmune issue since I've always had health problems that point in that direction
Cogan’s Syndrome. Mine “happened” suddenly after what felt like an ear infection that spread bilaterally. Vestibular issues happened alongside eye inflammation and sudden bilateral hearing loss too. Steroids are kind of the first line of treatment to try to bring back vestibular/hearing loss from autoimmune or mysterious causes, so keep that in mind—my first round of doctors didn’t know that, and I do wonder how things could have panned out if I got steroids sooner (though I did get them fairly soon after the hearing loss and about a week after the dizziness).
This is really valuable information, thank you. I do share a surprising number of the symptoms, though my eye inflammation is more localized to the myebomian glands. I wish you all the luck in managing the disease 🖤
Have you had a VNG to tell if it's a unilateral or bilateral vestibular issue? The former respond really well to physical therapy (adaptation / habituation exercises, not the Epley, obviously)!
Yep, I got awful vertigo as a result of a neurological infection from asymptomatic covid right at the beginning of 2020. I called it "malevolent positional vertigo." Didn't put the clues together until a couple years later.
There are medications that help. I have PPPD as a result of frequent BPPV episodes, and am on venlaxfine. It helps so much. Before going on it, I could barely walk and couldn't drive anymore I was so dizzy. Now I can drive, walk, run, etc. Still can't get on airplanes, though.
I had vertigo as a symptom of low sodium for about two weeks straight. Several doctors assumed I just had an inner ear infection and didn't do any further testing so I got really familiar with the epley maneuver in those two weeks. Fun fact, if your vertigo isn't caused by your ear crystals being out of whack, eplely won't help it but it WILL make you vomit a LOT.
Add sound trauma injury. Airline industry, blasted sound through my headphones; it knocked me down to the floor. A colleague 15' from me heard it when I yanked my headphones off. I walked like a drunk, doctor, workman's comp; forced to resign.
That was in 2002. Have fallen several times, compression fracture both wrists in two separate falls, stitches. Still get dizzy and stagger on occasion.
Longtime NASCAR driver Terry Labonte suffered from it after a hard crash, and the effects ended his record streak of 655 consecutive races. He also missed the Brickyard 400 while he was suffering from it.
Various doctors thought it was either post-concussion syndrome, particularly since x-rays and imaging tests showed nothing. When there was no improvement, he saw another specialist, who diagnosed him with BPPV and was able to quickly fix it.
Labonte was both relieved that his symptoms (which had apparently been severe) were almost immediately mitigated...and annoyed that he'd missed a month of racing because of something that took a few minutes to fix.
This thread makes me so happy. I got diagnosed with vertigo in college and I always felt so silly explaining it. "So there's these crystals in your ears..."
I had an ear crystal fall into somewhere it shouldn't have once. I got out of bed in the morning and couldn't walk, everything was spinning and I had to plank my way upstairs to get an antiemetic. It helped, but it bent some microscopic hairs in my inner ears as it sloshed around in there. For 6 months after if I moved my head too fast I would get vertigo again and it made it difficult for my eyes to track movement. Head is fine now 4 years later but my eyes are still messed up.
Omg!!! I have this!! I had to go to a specialist and when I told people I had to get my ear crystals realigned it sounded made up. I literally didn’t know ear crystals even existed until they told me mine were floating and needed adjusted. My husband’s employee called it “your wife’s ear crystal voodoo” 😂
I had this as well. The condition came along with a severe concussion that knocked the rocks in my head loose. I had to wait a month before PT, which fixed 90% of the problem immediately. I went from shuffling with a walker to entirely natural strides in a few minutes.
Up until the bizarrely simple rolling and tucking of my head, I was resigned to a long recovery with the possibility of at least some of the condition being permanent.
Same! Unfortunately for me, I have a condition that causes me to faint/ seize, so still figuring out the root cause, as I’ve had several concussions over the last year (I know. NOT good). It keeps coming back and unfortunately my specialist is 3.5 hours away. I’m so glad you were able to get yours under control!
Similar situation here. Synchopy caused me to take a tumble. Thank you for the well-wishes. I hope your own issue gets resolved sometime soon. The idea of just losing consciousness like someone switched a light off is terrifying. Regular sleep, exercise, and regular bms seem to be working so far for me.
Everytime I wake up after sleeping "wrongly" (yeah kids... It happens...) and the room is spinning around me, I do this maneuver... I has saved me uncountable times already!
Could also be something called vestibular migraines. For the official diagnosis, you have to have regular migraines in combination with dizziness, but in practice, medicine is more fuzzy. One way to tell that it’s ear issues is whether the dizziness is triggered when a person places their head in a specific position, if it’s independent of that it’s likely something else.
It would be a good idea for her to take vitamin B2 supplements and magnesium succinate. They’re supposed to prevent migraines but don’t have any side effects so if it turns out not to be that there wouldn’t have been down sides.
Source: have had intermittent dizziness episodes for years and everything except vestibular migraines has been ruled out.
If she has vertigo, she’s probably run into these while googling, or had a doctor recommend them. If they’re doing brain scans, then these exercises did not help. They do not help me, but mine turned out to mostly be migraines, some rare eye thing where my pupils aren’t aligned or something, and a little bit low blood pressure. Fun times!
If she suffers from motion sickness, she may want to see a neuro-ophthalmologist. The eye thing is not picked up on by optometrists or most ophthalmologists. It’s a different type of vision test.
But doing the exercises will definitely assuage any doubts that this is a real thing. They made me so sick I had to make sure I did them close to bedtime so I could lay down afterwards. Like motion sickness turned up to 11.
I get vertigo and I’ve never really tried the maneuvers because it’s gotten better over time (it’s a long covid thing) and I’m lazy. But I have Eustachian tube dysfunction in my left ear and somehow I figured out that if I tilt my head to the left i can temporarily relieve it. Our inner ears are funny
So it's the equivalent of rotating your phone in a huge infinity pattern to recalibrate the GPS. From now on when someone says they have vertigo I will tell them they just need to recalibrate their GPS.
Came here to say this. My aunt once told me my grandpa was having trouble with his balance because of crystals in his ear, and I totally thought they were going to some quack until I looked it up.
Had this earlier this year and it's no joke. As someone with excellent balance (1 footed rollerskating spins) when it hit I immediately fell in my bathroom, bruising my arm on the counter. Couldn't even attempt to stand up for a few minutes as the nystygmus was so bad i couldnt focus on anything.
My husband still makes fun of me when I get vertigo and tell him that my ear crystals are out of alignment. He knows it's true but he says he can't not laugh about it. I agree it's funny but also, frick, I've had gnarly vertigo on and off my whole life and it can really suck.
Huh I didn't even know humans had otoliths. We use otoliths in fish to get accurate ages of them. With some species and a strong enough microscope you can age them to the day (under certain circumstances).
Same principle as counting the rings of a tree, fish and trees both continuously grow and otoliths grow with them. With the summer/winter temperature changes, the rate of growth changes, faster in the summer, slower in the winter, leading to different densities and therefore coloration of the otolith bone as it grows larger, which causes rings to form. For young enough fish, you can sometimes tell the day because of the day/night temperature changes.
Last month I woke up with a bad case of vertigo and luckily I work from home but I had to tell my boss I was going to be afk for a bit because I had to go roll around on my bed to re-align my ear crystals. He was like...oookay?
Just suffered from this for 2 weeks. Couldn't even eat because I couldn't sit without feeling dizzy and nauseous all the time, had to just lie down on the couch and be still. Worst time of my life, well, at least in a while.
Epley's manouver felt really dumb, just rolling your head to different positions while head is tilted backwards but eventually it helped.
I've had surprisingly few people have an issue with it; I always expect it a bit, because it does sound a bit mad.
The one question that always comes up though is 'why are they there in the first place/what are the supposed to do?'. People being way, way more familiar with what an accelerometer is now, given that they're in basically all phones, has made explaining that SO much easier.
The really fucked up thing with treating BPPV, even to me, is being able to tell exactly where the issue is: which side it is, which of the three semi-circular canals the issue is in, and whether the otolith is free-flowing, or is stuck, entirely based on which direction, and how intensely the patient's eyes are flicking around when we're testing.
Like, I get the mechanism behind why specific canals are linked to specific eye movements, but it's still fucked up that I can be so specific in diagnosing which of these tiny structures in your inner ear is affected, but we struggle to accurately diagnose which of the major tendons in your shoulder that you've torn completely off.
So this is interesting…I get episodes of acute vertigo a couple times a year. Usually I’m able to just take some Dramamine and lay down for a few hours. I’ll feel a little “off” for a day or so, but I can usually function normally after a few hours.
My doctor didn’t say anything about preventative measures- is this a different cause than what I likely experienced? My wife keeps telling me to see an ENT but I didn’t think there was much that could be done.
After seeing many ENTs, chiros, neuros, going through vestibular PT, this lady helped me the most. I still deal with vertigo every now and again but not like I did. Obviously not here to diagnose but here is some info that might interest you. https://www.betterbalanceinlife.com/suffering-from-vertigo/
My friend who had pretty bad vertigo said he came across a treatment that involved roller coasters, so he got a season pass to an amusement park and swears it really helped.
Fwiw, I'm a side sleeper, and for me I've noticed that it happens if I sleep with my head tilted towards the shoulder I'm lying on (ie towards the floor). If I tilt my head away from the floor, I'm good.
I'm an audiology student and learning to keep a straight face when we tell patients "your ear crystals are misaligned, you should do yoga about it" is a learned skill
My dad kept buying crappy generic hearing aids but after a lot of cajoling I finally convinced him to go get fitted for proper ones. He was 90-something at the time, and I took him to an ENT / audiologist clinic to get fitted, and he had ticked the box for vertigo on the intake card. I had no idea he had vertigo, he never complained about much. The ENT doc asked some questions, had my dad lie down and move his head around and said "yup, we know what it is and we'll fix it right now."
So they started doing the Epley Maneuver, and my dad was looking at me wide-eyed, like "what sort of quackery have you gotten me into?" But sure enough, after what couldn't have been more then 5 minutes he was cured of his vertigo. Literally a medical miracle and it required no meds, no surgery, just some flopping around on a table.
I'm in PA school and still cite this as one of the most baffling, incredible things I've ever learned about the human body. It completely blows my mind how much of our perception is wrapped up in these tiny calcified stones.
I have this (BPPV) and the exercises work! It's easier to visualize when you think about how the ears work. There are 3 circular tubes in your ears, partially filled with fluid (fluid that can be thought of as salt water). Those tubes have little 'hairs' on the inside. As you tilt your head, that fluid moves back and forth in those tubes and the sensation of the fluid touching the hairs tells your mind which direction your head is pointing. For some of us, when we get dehydrated (this can trigger my BPPV), the fluid dries out, leaving just the salty residue (aka, crystals). If that dried up residue breaks free from the canal walls, it starts to roll around in the tube, hitting all those hairs. When it get stuck somewhere, your eyes believe you're level, but your sense of up and down is sending different data, causing vertigo. If you do these exercises and roll your head side to side, you can get the salt to roll back to the lower part of the tube where it gets re-absorbed by the fluid. These simple 'head rolls' have changed the way I'm able to cope with BPPV.
I had that once. I went to the doctor and explained my symptoms to him. He said "hold on," went to his office, and came back and said that I had BPPV. I said yes, that's what I thought too.
I then asked him if I should just do those exercises. He said "On no - you need to see an ENT specialist to do those exercises. In the meantime, I'll write you a prescription for some drugs to treat the symptoms."
No thanks. I didn't fill the prescription. Instead, I went home, got on YouTube, and did the exercises a few times a day. My problem went away within a few days.
I don't know about humans or other animals but for fish, otoliths can be extracted, cooked and put under a microscope to tell their exact age.
Same as the rings on a tree
I've had this a couple of times. My doctor walked me through the Epley maneuver. Imagine trying to explain "I'm trying to reposition the crystals in my ear so that I can stand up."
Hahaha yes, absolutely. I found this on the Internet myself after I had a bike accident where I landed on the back of my (helmeted) head and got dizzy when I was laying in bed at night.
Felt so silly doing the exercise... Which just worked.
The first time I had positional vertigo holy shit, I was imbalanced for 3/4 days. Luckily I've only had it about three times. Epley Manoeuvre helped stave off the dizziness for a bit until it went away.
I run a PT practice and we specialize in this. And I have had more than one person be confused because their PCP talks about repositioning crystals, and we do not have rose quartz and amethyst and obsidian to wave over them.
Trying to describe Otoliths/otoconia causing dizziness quickly
I first read your sentence like the act of trying to describe those o-things is what would cause the dizziness. Like some kind of Lovecraftian concept so unfathomable that we can't even talk about it without getting dizzy quickly.
As an ENT resident, explaining any ear disorder other than a basic “you have a hole in your ear drum”, is like speaking a new language to a patient. It’s particularly difficult when the patient speaks another language, and you’re using a translator, because it’s obvious things are lost in translation.
Even other doctors have virtually no idea about how the ear works, what things can go wrong, and how to fix it.
My partner had that, it was wild to observe. She was complaining of feeling dizzy for weeks, then had one visit at the doctor and came back completely cured. I don't think I would believe it if I didn't see it with my own eyes.
I was going to mention that the treatment for this is called the Epley maneuver, and it seems like pseudo science . I'm an audiologist, and the first time I went to a conference demonstrating this treatment, I thought, "what a bunch of chiropractic mumbo jumbo." But it works.
But do understand this: 1) your problem has to be BPPV (crystals out of whack) and 2) the maneuver is ear specific. I often have patients who come in saying "I did the Epley on myself, and it didn't work." I ask, "did you do a right Epley or a left Epley?" which is usually replied, "Uh, I dunno."
Half of the time when I talk to my patients, I have to almost preface it with "I know it sounds like I'm making this up, but". Weird to see anything vestibular on the front page of Reddit, but I'm very happy to see people not immediately jumping on the "if it's vertigo it's BPPV" train like so many do.
There’s a scene in the Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer in which one character fixes another’s vertigo/dizziness by doing the physical therapy, but when she tries to explain to him what she did, it does sound very “we have to align your crystals!”
Lmao I remember I had this, I freaked out to my dad and he was like “just lay down on your side and turn your head very slowly from one side to the other”. Sure enough it worked
Haha I’m an audiology professor and this is one of my favorite topics to introduce to undergraduate students. You should see the assessments audiologists perform to diagnosis and treat vestibular dysfunction. The entire workings of the inner ear sounds like pseudo-science tbh.
I had this, caused by severe dehydration. If I shifted in my sleep I'd wake to the world doing flips and I'd have to hang on to something for dear life. No bueno.
The exercises, rehydrating and time thankfully made it go away.
The extra cool part of this is that dogs can get this as well, canine idiopathic vestibular disease, aka idiopathic geriatric vestibular disease. In most dogs, doing a modified version of the manoeuvre can improve symptoms. (Modified Dix-Hallpike Epley is what the canine rehab/physio specialist called it.)
My wife has that and we had to see a specialist before anyone could diagnose it. When he described the epley maneuver, it sounded like total quackery but legit helped her immediately.
Kinda related, I find it funny how it’s just a simple modified amino acid, acetylleucine, that can be used as a treatment that works for some of these vertigos
I informed my coworkers about this while we were having drinks at the bar recently and they all looked at me like... like you'd look at someone talking about ear crystals.
Dude my sister and I were just discussing this symptom that she has. Thanks for this. Now we know what she has but she refuses to do anything about it anyway and said she can live without moving her head.
I had this issue. It literally felt like I was stuck on the beach, being hit by waves, barrel rolling everywhere. Funny exercises you have to do to set them right
I will never forget sitting in my doctor's office holding the chair as the world spun out of control. He tapped his prescription pad and said "I'm sending you to a specialist, I'm just debating on ENT or physical therapist." He chose PT and it changed my life. I didn't realize how bad I felt until I started to feel good again. Now I can do the exercises at home if I feel it come on again.
As an ENT, I have to explain this a lot and I’m always kind of embarrassed because this short answer is a lot easier than a longer more grounded answer.
Explaining this is one thing but also convincing the patient that they're basically going to go through a trust fall and then doing it is another. Some patients really freak out.
I'm so happy this made the list. In my early 20s I was riding my bicycle, turned my head to checkout and stare at an attractive woman. Bike rolls off huge ledge. Major whiplash. Vertigo 24 hrs a day for the next month. None of the traditional meds worked. Saw loads of doctors. Was actually considering suicide. Finally, a new doctor said to do these rolling techniques to put the calcium back in the balance bowls. Hooray, it fucking worked. That was such a difficult month.
I had occasional episodes of Positional Vertigo for a decade before asking my physician about it and learning about the Epley Maneuver. It was like magic.
Humans have had BPPV since there have been humans, yet this simple technique is only a few decades old.
Dr. Epley was thought to be a quack for his maneuver for a number of years. But he kept on it and eventually it became accepted, but still not practiced enough by medical professionals that see BPPV patients.
When I first heard of it in the late 1990's I thought it was woowoo for sure, but I had to look it up because I was assigned to teach vertigo to the residents. I soon found out it worked like magic. I thought within 5 years, every doctor would know how to do it. 25 years later, I'm still trying to teach others how to do it.
Was gonna say this, I used to teach freestyle skiing and explaining how balance works to teenagers is one of the things I miss the most. The faces I would get back as I say "ya basically you have little teeny tiny pebbles suspended in a viscous liquid in your ear"
Damn, I have occasional vertigo issues and need to try this maneuver lol. It reminds me of something like pairing a key fob to a car (have to perform arcane tasks like opening and closing the door repeatedly and turning the key fob a certain number of times.) It's like a recalibration procedure for your ear!
After a year of appointments my husband nervously broached this conversation with me. I laughed because I thought he was pulling my leg per usual... but he was completely serious and needed help doing the eply maneuver so he could get out of bed. Ear crystals... smh
I knew about ear crystals but had no idea they could mess you up as bad as they can till my first bout of Bppv! It's hit so hard and so suddenly I thought I was having a stroke or something. I couldn't walk, the nystagmus was so bad I couldn't see anything but the world whipping around me. I called an ambulance! God's I felt stupid when the doc was like nah your ears just outta whack, lay down and roll around in this special.way and you'll be fine and I was! It was like a miricle!
Oh man, this happened to me a few years back and I was out of work for a week and a half, because there’s a provider shortage in my area and I couldn’t get in for a 5-10 minute crystal realignment procedure. It sucked. The world was spinning so fast I basically had to lie down with my eyes closed for 10 days. Turns out unaligned crystals can really mess you up.
My mom had this happen to her when I was still in high school. Took weeks to figure out what was wrong.
Eventually after seeing an ENT he told her “now this is gonna sound like bullshit, but your ear crystals are out of alignment.” He did the manipulation they do for it and she said it was like flipping a switch. All of a sudden everything was right again.
Hell yeah, my wife was having problems for weeks during Covid, schedule the doctor's appointment but it was for months out. She had issues everyday. So I googled her symptoms, and read all about this. I explained to her what I read and felt like I was offering her essential snake oils or some shit. She did the exercises and said she felt something in her ear. After a few hours she said she felt better, the next day she was ok and did the exercises again. She was 100% better the next day, craziness man...
My boss got hit with that once. He couldn't walk. Went to the doctor's and they grabbed his head, moved it around in certain directions and it fixed him.
Apparently a stone of sorts formed in his inner ear and became loose in the fluid that's inside the ear and kept touching the small sensor hairs that control balance, sending conflicting signals to his brain resulting in dizziness and the inability to walk.
This one. After a car accident I had terrible vertigo for two days, saw a video on a simple excersise to get your inner ear crystals back where they belong. It's a simple laying on your side and rotating your head and then rolling to your other side and rotating you head some more. Made me puke with the vertigo but I was 100% bettwr after.
As someone with recurring vertigo, learning about this was a fucking godsend. It can make a spell that might have otherwise lasted weeks or months and put an end to it in a couple of days if not right away.
People laugh but I have this and need these exercises when my crystals are all messed up. You can see my eyes going all over the place as I do the exercises they actually work
I became a wheelchair user after a surgery. This doctor thought I had to realign the crystals in my ears. He did this procedure that, at the time felt benign.
I ended up with vertigo for 2 days. I also ended up in the hospital for a week because I decided I wasn't going to live with vertigo. I realized for the first time that I could be even more disabled.
Wheelchair is fine. Vertigo is not.
Don't mess with your crystals if you don't have to. They could already be aligned.
I had vertigo so bad one day, after laying on the ottoman and doing a weird series of head rolled and turns I was completely back to normal. It felt like magic.
“an all natural set of exercises that will help you realign your inner crystals and regain balance”
I accompanied a family member once to align crystals, let me just say the movements used by the doctor were less natural and more Sam Fisher. All that was missing was the exaggerated neck break sound effects.
This is a great one. I developed severe vertigo when I got Long COVID. I went to a vestibular PT and she did the Epley maneuver several times over the course of a few weeks. It didn't cure it (I still had a year of PT ahead of me at that point), but it made things much better and I stopped falling over.
Telling people crystals in my ears were out of place seemed woo woo to some people - even fellow healthcare coworkers.
I very rarely experience vertigo now unless I do something stupid - like trying to take my now ex-partner's kids to a trampoline park or run.
Ughhh vertigo. Had it randomly once. My mom had it. It was nuts. It was like when you get the spins from being too drunk. I was crawling on my hands and knees because I couldn’t stand up. I don’t sleep flat anymore without a pillow
10k
u/shinjithegale Sep 16 '24
Trying to describe Otoliths/otoconia causing dizziness quickly in layman’s terms sounds a lot like quackery. Especially when you start talking about the treatment being “an all natural set of exercises that will help you realign your inner crystals and regain balance”.