Hi Joe,
Yes I too suffer with this problem I call it “sensory input overload”.
From what I hear most people with equilibrium /vestibular problems have this type of problem.
Our brain is often overloaded with information our bodies normally take for granted, like not having to concentrate where we walk ie (maneuvering corners in our own home) ect:
My Effexor has diminished most of it.
Our inner ear is only “one” of our balancing systems our sight /skin / feet, and other body parts that help our balance, so if one or more of these systems are out of whack, then our brain try’s to overcompensate, causing problems.
For instance, if a person starts to loose some of the lower end of hearing the brain “takes over” and makes these sounds louder, unfortunately problems can occur due to “ too much overcompensation” of the brain, so that the sound then becomes too sharp, causing us to become oversensitive to the sound.
I believe this is what our brains have done, so things like , hearing / sight/ and other input becomes too much to take in.
I hope I’m making sense here.
**I was reading from the MDds site a while ago , and a lady sent in this. **
jen
xxx
:shock:
**Hi All,
I have been looking into something called sensory integration for my
daughter who has very mild behavioral issues, and I have stumbled upon
a treatment that I intuitively believe could possibly be of great help
to people with MDDs (My sister has had MDDS for 17 years and so I have
made it my life’s goal to try and find a cure, so please let me know
what you think of the following). Sensory Integration covers a lot of
ground, and I have mostly heard about it with respect to people who
have issues with ADD of ADHD. But I recently came across something
that I have never heard of before called Sensory Defensiveness. To be
brief, when a person is not processing information from the visual,
auditory or vestibular systems properly he/she sometimes starts to
show signs of something called sensory defensiveness which means they
start avoiding different things to keep their internal systems less
stressed. The most extreme version of sensory defensiveness would be
someone with autism. As I looked over the list of things that people
with sensory defensiveness avoid, I started to see a pattern that
reminded me of MDD. For example, florescent lights, malls, crowded or
noisy situations, the list goes on and on and contains almost
everything that I have read from the email list that people with MDD
avoid. It started me thinking that maybe MDDS is another extreme
version of sensory defensiveness where the brain gets locked into a
pattern that is a kind of short circuit of the sensory input.
So, in researching this for my daughter I have come across something
called the Sensory Learning Institute which you can check out here:
sensoryl earning.com/
This woman Mary Bolles has set up a series of these institutes around
the country, and even though you may think they deal only with
children from the website, I have talked with the people at the
institute and they deal with people of all ages. What they do is a
very short term intensive treatment that lasts for 12 days in a row,
followed by a home based treatment of 18 days that is monitored.
Apparently they have had great success with a variety sensory and
brain disorders – including stroke, alzheimers, etc. I have not yet
asked them about MDDS – but I wonder if they have even heard of it.
I am going to be visiting the Boulder based institute tomorrow and
speaking with Mary Bolles herself.
I wanted to know if anyone has tried this kind of treatment before?
If you would like to understand more about sensory defensiveness,
there is an excellent book called “Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too
Tight” by Sharon Heller that gives a really clear picture of what this
is all about.
Thanks.**