What is Vertigo and What is it like to Have It?

Did someone say vertigo is fun, like having a buzz? Red hot skin, dripping sweat from every pore, sick to your stomach, throwing up, brain so cloudy you can't think your way out of the fog, and something keeps pushing you over or taking the floor away. Yeah, lots of fun. So much fun you stay in bed for days on end. Whoopee.

Vertigo is a disorder that has several possible causes. Some of them are serious. If you have episodes of vertigo symptoms, go to your doctor. The small percent of cases caused by a serious medical condition require medical treatment, immediately. Fortunately, most cases of vertigo are caused by non-life-threatening conditions.

The three most common causes of vertigo are brain trauma due to a blow to the head, which usually occurs in automobile accidents, migraine related vertigo, and ear damage related vertigo, which also often occurs in automobile accidents. These are serious enough and require medical treatment and management, but in nearly every case they are not potentially life threatening. That knowledge can be a great relief even while your brain and your world spin out of control. There is also ear disease related vertigo having nothing to do with a blow from an accident. Your doctor will identify and treat the underlying cause of your vertigo.

Vertigo is defined as a symptom of a balance disorder in which the individual perceives motion contrary to actual motion. And vertigo can be triggered by many sensory stimulations: motion, sound, vision. What is vertigo like? Sometimes suffers feel like they are spinning or they may feel pushed or pulled in an opposing direction to their actual motion.

For instance, you could be standing still in the kitchen and suddenly lurch toward the kitchen table which is five feet behind you. Or maybe you're a migraine suffer and have just returned home from your brother's college graduation at which there was a very, very loud jazz band playing followed by an equally loud string of five or six speeches. You try to pour yourself a drink of purified water and you suddenly spin in a circle, crashing into your flatmate. This is subjective vertigo. You feel pushed or pulled in a motion opposing to your actual motion or stance.

Sometimes suffers make a motion and the world around them moves in a manner different from what the motion would require. This is also what vertigo is like. For instance, you turn your head to the right in casual perusal of the surroundings and the surrounds move after you -- not with you -- in three swooshing giant steps after which your sense of location and movement finally match. You say to yourself, "That wasn't right...." Or perhaps you're sitting quietly reading and all of a sudden the world around you starts spinning like you've just played the children's game "Motor Boat, Motor Boat." This time you say, "What was that..." This is objective vertigo. You feel the world around you is spinning and moving around you.

I was stricken with vertigo after a mild rear-ending accident, though it seems now that I have had mild migraine related vertigo all my life. My head snapped forward and "compromised my audial nerve" in one ear and "jostled a little bone" in the other. In the first one I have hypersensitive hearing and in the second I have obstructive hearing loss. What a combination. I say "Eh?" if you talk to me on one side and flinch in pain if you talk to me on the other. Great.

The first vertigo attack that I had after the accident was in the early morning at about 4 AM. This is what vertigo is like for me: I got up from bed and walked in a straight line toward the bedroom door, as I usually do. I didn't get very far because, while walking in a straight line, I went in a 360 degree circle and then fell flat on my back. Fortunately the foot of the bed was behind me. My doctor never said anything at the time about vertigo. What she did say was that "this is all part of whiplash, although a very severe whiplash." After being tested by an audiologist, I sat back and waited for the whiplash to heal.

Still, flashing lights, like car signal lights, sounds, like washing dishes, turning my head, like while driving, bending over, stooping down, walking more than a a few dozen feet send me into violent nausea and blazing sweat-drenched heat of vertigo. This is what vertigo is like for me today. Either the world shifts and spins in strange ways around me or I go staggering in directions I never meant to go in. My mind is so hazed over and bogged down in a mush-like fog that I can't manage to do anything, which includes giving a civil greeting to my daughter. I can barely manage eye contact with her while I stumble past on legs that feel as though they could melt out from under me.

Just recently I went to a naturopathic doctor and he is the first to say, "It's vertigo. The world moving when you're not is vertigo. Sure. Any sensory stimuli will bring it on: light, sound, motion." So now I know. Because my vertigo involves ear damage -- besides minor brain trauma -- I've noticed that if I sleep on the side that has the least ear damage that my vertigo symptoms during the night and first thing in the morning are less severe.

Also, for the same reason, I've noticed that talking on the telephone and eating crunchy foods like nuts, carrot sticks, chips, crackers greatly exacerbates my vertigo making it horribly worse, especially the mushy, foggy brain and limp limbs symptoms. Your naturopathic doctor should be able to tell you which homeopathic drops to to put on bits of cotton to put in your ears to help ear/hearing related symptoms resulting from a blow due to an accident.

But I don't have some of the worst symptoms of vertigo. I haven't fallen since that first incredible time (I knew exactly why it happened -- I was in an accident. Imagine the fear of falling flat on your back without knowing the reason for it). I don't have vomiting spells and the floor doesn't seem to fall out from under my feet. Many cases of vertigo are far worse than mine. This is what vertigo is like and it is a horrible thing. The only mercy is that in many cases vertigo is not related to a life threatening condition. See your doctor to determine the underlying cause of your vertigo.

These web sites provide valuable information for vertigo sufferers:

http://www.learnaboutvertigo.com/?gclid=CIH2hMLt_IsCFQ3aZQodTEV_Uw This one offers a homeopathic remedy for vertigo.

http://www.neurologychannel.com/vertigo/symptoms.shtml This one offers extensive and accurate information and provides a sufferer's Forum.

http://www.thepurplepeople.com/ This on sells Essence oils, click the link "Essence Oils Emporium."

These offer more important information:

http://www.emedicinehealth.com/vertigo/article_em.htm

http://www.ucsfhealth.org/adult/medical_services/audio/vertigo/conditions/vertigo/signs.html

http://www.healthscout.com/ency/68/462/main.html

http://www.ucsfhealth.org/adult/medical_services/audio/vertigo/conditions/vertigo/treatments.html

http://www.hpathy.com/diseases/vertigo-symptoms-treatment-cure.asp

http://www.vertigo-dizziness.com/english/whiplash_injury.html

http://www.healthscout.com/ency/68/516/main.html This one explains Nystagmus eye movements, which are related to vertigo.