Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) is among the leading reasons for visits to a chiropractor for vertigo in Seneca, SC. It’s a common vestibular disorder that mainly occurs among adult patients in their late 50s, but it can affect young kids and adolescents ranging from 5 to 19 years old. Often, patients with BPPV experience disabling bouts of vertigo after tilting or moving the head. The episode can last for a few minutes but could extend for hours, causing mild to severe disorientation and preventing movements that could impact work or personal life.
Have you been diagnosed with this vestibular problem? Do you know someone who suffers from vertigo episodes due to BPPV? If you reply yes to any of the two questions, learning about the condition can help you significantly improve and manage the symptoms.
Below are the four most frequently asked questions of patients who seek a chiropractor for vertigo in Seneca, SC. Let’s tackle them one by one!
Table of Contents
1. What is BPPV?
Your trip to your primary doctor because of symptoms like nystagmus, vertigo, vomiting, neck pain, loss of balance, and nausea suggested that you have benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. After doing physical tests to rule out other possible causes, your doctor confirmed that you indeed suffer from BPPV. So, what does it mean? How does the disorder affect your body?
Now, if you try to revisit basic anatomy lessons, you’ll remember that ears serve two functions – sound perception and balance. As a patient diagnosed with BPPV, your sense of balance is a bit messed up. This situation stems from a problem within your vestibular system plus the organs involved in perceiving changes in the head’s motion or orientation. To be more specific, your spinning sensations result from the migration of calcium crystals or otoliths in the fluid-filled semicircular canals. The presence of these crystals in the wrong place inside your ears causes you to sense false motions.
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2. Should patients worry about BPPV?
Many of our patients who need a chiropractor for vertigo in Seneca, SC feel a bit intimidated by their BPPV condition. This is mostly, because it sounds like a very troublesome disorder. In truth, it’s not life-threatening as you can resolve it or reduce symptoms by practicing some management techniques.
Let’s try to break down the meaning of the condition to help you understand it a bit more:
- Benign – It doesn’t cause life-threatening effects.
- Paroxysmal – It occurs in short bursts.
- Positional – You experience the symptoms when you move or change the position of your head.
- Vertigo – A type of dizziness that causes you to experience a spinning sensation even when you’re completely still.
If you have been closely observing your vertigo attacks, you’ll notice that they tend to get worst when you tilt your head. As a result, activities like rolling on the other side of the bed or walking fast tend to exacerbate neck pain, nausea, vomiting, and vertigo.
3. What are some potential causes or triggers of BPPV?
Studies on BPPV continue to investigate the root cause of the condition. However, until today, we only have theories instead of a definite explanation. One of the commonly believed triggers or causes of this debilitating condition is a head or neck injury. Trauma due to contact sports, car collisions, and other similar events can affect the spinal health and dislodge the otoliths.
Besides this popular BPPV theory, here are other possible triggers of your symptoms:
- Aging
- Migraine
- Meniere’s disease
- Previous or current viral infection
- Keeping your head in the same orientation for a prolonged period, like when having your hair washed at a salon or during bed rest
4. Is it possible to completely resolve BPPV symptoms?
As we’ve mentioned earlier, the otoliths’ displacement tricks your brain into sensing motion even when you’re not moving at all. So, unless those crystals migrate back into their original place, your symptoms will persist for several months. Remedies like the Epley Maneuver and the Bradt-Daroff exercise may come in handy to reposition the dislodged calcium crystals. In most cases, these simple interventions can provide you with vertigo relief for a few days. It could take numerous trials before you can see significant changes in your vertigo attacks and other BPPV symptoms.
If these don’t work out the way they should, you can try upper cervical care. Essentially, this approach focuses on fixing spinal alignment – a critical factor that affects your brain’s ability to connect and control the body.
Working with a chiropractor for vertigo in Seneca, SC
Often as a chiropractor for vertigo in Seneca, SC, we have patients who ask if they can fully get rid of their disabling symptoms through upper cervical chiropractic care. We answer that by carefully assessing the severity of the neck bone alignment.
As a BPPV sufferer, this is the last thing you want to have because it can cause miscommunication between your brain and your vestibular organ. Unfortunately, many patients diagnosed with BPPV actually have this problem. The worst part is that the neck bone alignment problem remains undetected, causing the vertigo episodes to recur often.
If you have a history of spinal or head injury or your vertigo symptoms often come along with neck pain, you likely have a misaligned spine. Until you have it checked and restored to its normal and neutral position, your symptoms will only keep haunting you and prevent you from enjoying many things in life.
Have you been struggling with BPPV episodes for a long time and experienced little to zero relief from the previous remedies you tried? Call us at Upper Cervical Health & Restoration at 864-888-4399! You can also reach us via our contact form.
To schedule a consultation with Dr. Holliday, call our Seneca office at 864-888-4399. You can also click the button below.
If you are outside of the local area you can find an Upper Cervical Doctor near you at www.uppercervicalawareness.com.
