Here are the Epley Exercises for home-treatment of Benign Positional Vertigo (BPV).
Thank goodness for the wonders of the internet!
About a month ago out of the blue, I started having a very scary experience. I became plagued with dizziness and nausea. I would turn my head or even roll over in bed and experience vertigo. Usually, any health problems I have are connected to my diet so I cut out the iffy foods. That didn’t help. I started taking ginger and licorice extracts. The ginger extract did help with the nausea. I started drinking ginger tea but the vertigo did not go away.
After three weeks of vertigo, most people would run to the doctor. I’m not most people but I was getting scared. So, I decided to do some internet research on dizziness and after less than five minutes found this quote on Benign Positional Vertigo:
“A person who has short episodes of intense spinning sensations when looking up or even rolling over in bed, may have BPV. This is a condition that causes small calcium carbonate crystals to become out of position from the central portion of the inner ear, where it floats about in the semi circular canals, bouncing on nerve cells and making them fire the wrong signals to the brain.”
“Because of hormonal factors women develop this condition more frequently then men. The way women process calcium could also be a factor. A women 40 years old has a 1-3% chance of getting BPV. The risk is higher the older she gets. For women who are postmenopausal BPV is the leading cause of dizziness. Thankfully the treatment for BPV is very easy. Your doctor or a physical therapist can perform a maneuver to re-position crystals in the inner ear. By applying different swift head motions it can shift the crystals to a pocket in the inner ear that is less sensitive, and will later dissolve.”*
What caught my attention was the description of exactly what I was going through and that there were exercises that a doctor or physical therapist can do to re-position the crystals. Well, I could do the exercises at home if I knew what to do! It took another five minutes of research to find the exercises. There are a number of types of exercises. I tried the Epley Exercises which were stated to work for most people. Here’s a link to a PDF download for the Epley self-help exercises.
I had someone in the family read out the directions while I did the exercises. I did the exercises twice and 90% of the vertigo disappeared! Within another two days the vertigo was completely gone! I think I had done the exercises a total of eight times. The exercises are very easy to do. There was no need for a doctor’s visit or medications.
Like I said, the wonders of the internet! The internet is an amazing modern resource for finding health information quickly that would have taken days or weeks to research a generation ago. I feel incredibly lucky to have had the internet to help solve my own household health problems and not have to resort to using the medical system.
* Here’s the link to the original article on Benign Positional Vertigo which got me on the right track for solving my vertigo.
11 Causes of Dizziness
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