Rock Slides in Your Ears: A Common Cause of Dizziness Responds Well to Simple Exercises at Home

Have you ever been accused of having rocks in your head? That accusation might be accurate if you tend to get dizzy when you stoop over or hang your head down. The cause of dizziness in about 20% of cases is little calcium crystals in the inner ear, called ear rocks, that slide out of place. Rock slides in your ears can be treated with simple exercises at home.

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is the name for dizziness due to a change in position that causes ear rocks to slide out of position. About 50% of dizziness in older adults is due to ear rocks. Ear rock slides occur frequently in this population due to degeneration in the inner ear structures.

My personal experience with ear rocks has made me very, very careful about bending my head down or swinging my head around. Most "authoritative information" about BPPV does not strongly emphasize the importance of avoiding changes in head position.

Authorities claim that BPPV almost always comes back and may be idiopathic (without an identifiable cause). That has not been my personal experience. I have had four bouts of horrible dizziness and they were all due to changes in position involving repeated lowering of my head.

One bout of BPPV occurred when we spent a four-day weekend in our small RV. I am tall and everything in the RV is low. I kept bending over to light the oven or to make my bed or to get something out of a bottom drawer. On the third day, I was a little dizzy. By the fourth day, the dizziness was full-blown and I was miserable.

My second personal experience with a horrible dizzy spell was when our Border Collie got cancer. I was determined to save her life. I spent a fortune on natural remedies and I bent down to give her some kind of treatment about every hour. About 3 days into that, the dizziness was severe. After that, I lowered myself onto the floor, head up, to care for her.

The third bout of BPPV occurred after we sold our house and moved into a larger RV (I have wanted to do this for years!). My bed is now a very nice futon with an excellent mattress. The problem is that I have to stand in front of it and bend way over to fold it up or down. About 3 days of that brought on an episode of dizziness that put me to bed for a couple of days.

Another bout of dizziness was caused by doing neck rolls-to the side, to the back, to the other side, and to the back again. I now avoid that type of head-roll exercise.

Long story made short, if I don't stoop over or hang my head down, I don't get the dizziness.

You Can Treat BPPV with Simples Exercises at Home (Epley Maneuver). Sometimes just sleeping with the affected side up will relieve the dizziness.

My personal experience with ear rocks was that, though the Epley Maneuver began to help immediately, the dizziness did not completely resolve for 3 to 4 days. It is much better to prevent BPPV by squatting instead of stooping and by avoiding changes in head position.

Summary

Dizziness can be due to infection, injury, or disease but is often brought on by changes in position of the head (BPPV), especially in older adults. Over-the-counter dizziness remedies, like meclizine, may help a little with the nausea but they do not help put ear rocks back into position. Squatting, keeping the head up, instead of stooping, may completely prevent bouts of dizziness. I have treated past episodes of dizziness at home with simple exercises that cause the ear rocks to slide back into position-the Epley Maneuver.

Sources:

Allison Aubrey. Inner Ear 'Rock Slides' Lead to Vertigo. NPR.

Timothy C. Hain. Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. Dizziness-and-Balance.com.

Charles S. Yanofsky, Albert W. Heck, Jon L. Vickery, Francis J. Janton, and Liana Laza. Dizziness Explained: Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo. Pennsylvania Neurological Associates, Ltd.

Sue Ann Zollinger. Otoliths, Ear Rocks, and the Epley Maneuver. Moment of Science.