Treatment for vertigo may come in a variety of forms ranging from bed rest to surgery. For most vertigo sufferers, treatment most often includes the use of prescription medications in addition to strategic therapy styled care, including the use of head maneuvers. If you are suffering from common vertigo, or a condition such as BPPV, you may want to consult with an ENT specialist to determine what treatment is best for your condition.
Head maneuvers have become increasingly more common in recent years and are actually quite successful at resolving many types of vertigo. Unlike dizziness, vertigo is a complex sensation of moving when you are actually sitting or lying still, even with only a slight change in position. For treating both subjective vertigo, one in which you feel as if you are moving, as well as objective vertigo, as if objects are moving around you, head maneuvers should be considered by an ENT who is specialized in vertigo treatments.
While rehabilitation and therapy are also quite effective at treatment common vertigo, including BPPV, most patients with vertigo report that the actual use of head maneuvers produced the best results. Typically, however, the ENT specialist will not recommend head maneuvers at the onset of care. Instead, your doctor may refer you to a physical therapist who will teach you to perform simple body movements twice per day in an effort to elicit the vertigo and then to alleviate the complication by retraining the brain.
Because vertigo is most often the result of an abnormal balance of fluid movement in the inner ear, head maneuvers help to remove objects from the inner ear and out of the equilibrium system where your body can reabsorb them naturally. In many patients, head maneuvers elicit severe vertigo followed by nausea and even vomiting but the end result is far better than suffering from the BPPV or common vertigo on a daily basis – attempting to wait out the condition until it resolves on its own.
There are many types of head maneuver treatments that can be performed and so, as a vertigo patient, you will want to ask your ENT which is best. In most cases, vertigo patients, especially those with BPPV, will find that canalith repositioning procedure is the most effective of all and this is the procedure you will want to ask your ENT to perform.
Vertigo of any type is a complex health condition that can lead to a lifelong battle with healthcare. To shorten your need for treatment, ask your ENT about the use of head maneuvers as this may be the treatment that will successfully end your vertigo and, ultimately, negate the need for rehab, medications and even surgery.
Sources: Harvard Women’s Health Watch, Aug 2008, 12:4-5
