Common Vitamin Cures Vertigo

Vertigo is one of the most common conditions for which people visit emergency centers, and repeated studies have found that doctors don’t know how to treat it.

But a new study just published in the Ear, Nose & Throat journal reveals probably the easiest way to treat vertigo.

All you have to do is load up on one cheap, widely available vitamin.

A team of scientists from Mahidol University in Bangkok decided to investigate whether vitamin D deficiency is more common in vertigo sufferers than in the general population.

This investigation has been conducted in other countries, especially in European countries where sunshine, the biggest source of vitamin D, is often absent.

They recruited 137 participants from a hospital, 69 with BPPV and 68 with good balance.

The BPPV group was subdivided into participants who had been diagnosed only once and patients who had experienced recurrent bouts of vertigo after being successfully treated.

The researchers collected blood from both groups to measure their vitamin D levels.

They also made sure that there were no important demographic differences between the two main groups so that their findings would not be influenced by any other factors.

They reached two primary conclusions.

1. The BPPV group had lower vitamin D blood levels than the group with good balance.
2. There were no differences in the vitamin D levels between the once-off and recurrent BPPV groups.

They defined vitamin D deficiency as a 25-OH vitamin D level below 20 ng/mL (Nanograms per milliliter of blood). They defined vitamin D insufficiency as a level between 21 and 29 ng/mL and vitamin D sufficiency as a level above 30 ng/mL.

Luckily, there is an easy solution.

In a 2020 edition of Neurology, Korean researchers showed that vitamin D and calcium supplementation twice a day could prevent this form of vertigo.

They analyzed 957 people with BPPV, 348 of whom had vitamin D levels below 20 ng/mL; they were given a supplement with 400 IU (international units) of vitamin D and 500 milligrams of calcium twice a day.

Compared with the rest of the participants, who had not received the supplement, this group was 24% less likely to suffer a recurrence of their vertigo.

If you don’t want to take a supplement, simply eat enough foods that are fortified with vitamin D, and consume enough calcium-rich foods like dairy, sardines and pilchards (where you eat the bones), spinach, kale, poppy seeds, white beans, and almonds.

But if loading up on vitamin D is not enough to eliminate your vertigo, then you want to do the simple vertigo exercises explained here. These work for almost anyone with any type of vertigo and dizziness…