This happens to be fairly often in addition to an off balance and dizzy feeling. When I talk it’s like blood is rushing to my head and I am about to spin!
I had it happen to me when I was particularly stressed. Exactly like that. It actually happened twice before the dizziness became chronic.
My personal theory is when you are stressed your blood pressure goes up momentarily and if your inner ear is swollen you feel dizzy at the same time. Initially I would stop feeling dizzy after a few seconds. Unfortunately I suspect the swelling got worse and I ended up feeling this way chronically. However I still can detect this same mechanism and it sometimes increases my tinnitus momentarily.
This sounds like me ., but couldn’t my ears be swollen from the upper respiratory infection I had before all this started?
Ok here’s the complex part: if you caused a pressure injury to your inner ear by coughing or sneezing hard when your tubes were blocked you might have caused a breach of your inner ear window and got a fistula. These heal usually but the leak upsets the pressure regulation of the ear so you get an increase in the pressure. This won’t calm down until the ear has healed and then it can hang around. Mine has calmed a little but it does so very slowly.
The doctors will almost never diagnose you with this because they only do so now if there is proof of obvious trauma. However new research from Japan is suggesting fistula are more common. If this gets more widely accepted we may see a big change in diagnosis. I suspect MAV is raised pressure of the inner ear but my opinion is contentious and please take it with a pinch of salt. However it’s the only explanation that makes sense to me. This whole of concept migraine causing all these terrible symptoms is just very unlikely imho
Can a fistula cause positional vertigo?
I reckon so as I have been diagnosed with one and I used to get vertigo in bed but only when I rolled onto my side. I explain that by suggesting the pressure in the ear goes up slightly, enough to breach the wound, cause a temporary leak, make the fluid move through your inner ear and give you the spinning sensation. I don’t get it anymore.
I used to get it when talking on the phone, tilting my head to the right.
Would be this be a problem flying? I’m a petrified to fly on Sunday
Make sure your tubes are clear: sudafed
Also I would get an explicit ‘OK’ to fly from an ENT surgeon if you can see someone before then. I’m not qualified to give you that OK but having clear tubes is definitely important.
I’ve gone twice and have completed the hearing test twice and he said there is nothing he can see that’s wrong … he said flying won’t do anything
Great!
Would a hearing test detect blocked tubes? They told me the hearing test tells them a lot about my ears…
Yesterday I had done the TENS therapy for TMJ which revealed I have some serious spasms in my joints where my ears are. The dentist obviously couldn’t make diagnoses but he did say, the fact that my jaw is not sitting correctly could explain some of the headaches I get.
I did notice that after an hour of having TENS therapy on, my vertigo was worse. I felt a headache coming on, but it never actually did. When I went to sleep last night, it felt like I was rocking on a boat.
Would avoid dental work for time being. TMJ is best dealt with by calming the muscles. Don’t fidget with mouth, eat softer food for a while, DONT bite food, let alone NAILS! I got TMJ from relaxation exercises (yes!) where I clenched my jaw and released the tension. Eventually after a few weeks my jaw went into spasm.
Blocked tubes? Very blocked tubes dull your hearing but without pressure changes its hard to tell if they are properly blocked. Take sudafed as prophylactic 30 minutes before landing.
It’s weird because I don’t have any hearing loss at all. The ENT says my hearing is impeccable which makes him not worry about anything serious going on. But in the mornings, I feel like they have water in them which fades by mid afternoon.
Any ideas what that could be?
I get that. That sounds like leakage from the ear. I bet you have a fistula. That’s what I was diagnosed with by a very eminent ENT surgeon after being unsatisfied with the BS from neurologists.
Don’t panic. They heal. But takes a very long time. Mine still leaks after nearly 2 years but the leak has decreased significantly. Monitor yours for any decrease.
How could they miss that? The fullness is in my left ear and the BPPV was in my right ear… so friggen confusing.
Because it’s VERY hard to be sure without surgery. There is no conservative test to establish one.
Also there is LOADS of politics in medicine about the prevalence of fistulas. It’s a mess!
I take Amitriptyline to reduce the impact. Try it.
And fistulas take a long time to go away?
Yes. It’s a wound in one of the inner ear windows to the inner ear. It’s under variable pressure. They break open and heal repeatedly. Eventually this scars over and gets stronger. The challenge for the body is that the fluid is perilymph which I don’t believe has a clotting mechanism like blood.
In the same ear, I get the tympani spasms as well and when I get headaches, they are always in that ear. I also feel when wind touches my ear, it goes right through it - it’s a very bizarre symptom.