Self-Treatment of Vertigo Discovered

A vertigo episode is a particularly scary event, and many people who experience vertigo rush to the emergency room, thinking they’re having a stroke.

A study in JAMA Neurology demonstrates how it is possible to self-diagnose and self-treat vertigo.

Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is the most common form of vertigo. It happens when particles called otoconia break off inside the inner your and fall into semicircular canals, where they trigger nerve hairs to create a spinning sensation.

The solution is pretty straightforward: make them fall out of those semicircular canals through a series of head movements.

It’s not that simple, however, because the exact nature of the head movements needed depends on which ear the problem occurs in, and the movements have to be performed correctly.

So, are we back to a hospital visit?

Scientists set out to prove that web-guided self-diagnosis and self-treatment of vertigo could work.

They recruited 585 people from a set of Korean University hospitals who had already been diagnosed with BPPV.

They were all treated successfully with a series of head movements called the canalith repositioning maneuver.

They all went home, but because BPPV often recurs, they were sent home with specific instructions about what to do on recurrence.

Through a web link, participants in the control group were shown a video on how to do the canalith repositioning maneuver based on the ear that had first been diagnosed and cured.

Through a different web link, the intervention group was given a questionnaire to identify the ear responsible for the recurrent BPPV and shown a video on how to do the canalith repositioning maneuver for that ear.

Of the 128 participants, 58 in the treatment group experienced a recurrence of their BPPV, and 70 in the control group did.

1. In the intervention group, 72.4% treated their BPPV successfully.
2. In the control group, only 42.9% treated theirs successfully.

If you think about it, this is quite an amazing result. It means that a disorder can be diagnosed and treated through a web-based program alone, without a single other human involved.

This eliminates the need for doctors, nurses, large medical bills, drugs, and even transport to a doctor’s office.

The only potential problem that might remain is that the subjects in the study had an average age of between 60 and 61, which suggests the need for a web-based program that is free from unnecessary complexities.

This program is unfortunately not available to the general public yet. We have, however, developed a set of simple vertigo exercises that work for all types of vertigo and can be done by anyone. You can learn our simple vertigo exercises here…