Your Vertigo & How To Manage It

Dr. Doug - Chiropractor
Jun 10
3 min read

Dr. Doug - Chiropractor in Brampton - Voted Best Chiropractor 2024

Woman spinning around and suffering from vertigo. — Effective Treatment For Vertigo

Vertigo Is Going Round...and Round and Round.

I find it curious how many patients seem to suffer from certain conditions at the same time. Recently it's been Vertigo. In just over a week, I’ve treated a several cases, when I haven’t seen it for some time. So what is Vertigo and how can you manage it?

Types of Vertigo

Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV)

A mouthful for sure! BPPV is considered to be the main cause of vertigo. Vertigo is described as the sensation of the room spinning around you or you are spinning - when neither is moving at all. This is differs from dizziness, which feels like unsteadiness or light headedness.

BPPV is the result of a problem of the vestibular part of the inner ear, which regulates balance. You feel that the room spins when move in a specific way, like looking down or rolling over in bed. The spinning sensation usually lasts only a minute or two and then recedes. In the vestibular mechanism, there are 3 semi-circular canals that sense when we are moving and then report movement to the brain. There are small “stones” found in the inner ear called otoconia and they assist in sensing movement.

BPPV starts when one or more of these stones breaks loose from its location and travels through one of the semicircular canals. This action stimulates the sensors in the inner ear to make it feel like you are moving. This signals motion to the brain when there isn't any. The result is vertigo.

Upon examination of a vertigo patient, specific tests determine whether BPPV is the cause of the vertigo and which of the 3 canals is affected. Treatment involves positioning the patient in very specific ways to get the stones to travel back out of the semicircular canal and back to where they belong. This can trigger the vertigo briefly, but in the end solves the problem.

Cervicogenic Vertigo

Vertigo doesn’t always start in the inner ear. Another type of vertigo is called cervicogenic vertigo. The word cervicogenic means originating in the cervical spine (neck). After ruling out possibilities like BPPV, an examination of the neck and shoulders is needed.

Balance involves 3 systems: visual, vestibular (inner ear) and proprioception (the body’s awareness of itself in its environment). Nerve signals are sent from the body up to the brain so we know whether we are upright, moving or still. When these systems are out of sync, the brain has difficulty interpreting what is going on.

Cervicogenic vertigo patients show up in my office with extreme tension on one side of their neck and shoulders. The very tight side is sending very different signals to the brain than the other side. Since the signals are so different, the brain decides that the person is turning.

The way to reduce this type of vertigo is to relax the muscles on the tight side and perform any adjustments to the spine that are necessary. Treatment evens out the signals to the brain and the vertigo disappears. Luckily this does not take a long time to resolve and you can get back to your normal activities quickly.

Other Causes of Vertigo

Vertigo has other causes such as viruses that affect the inner ear, or conditions like Meniere’s disease. It can be tricky to differentiate one cause from the other, but if you give as much detail as possible about your symptoms, you can help to enlighten your practitioner.

Call and book an appointment today with Dr. Doug to discuss treatment for your Vertigo and let him help stop the world spinning round and round!