Does anyone here take a diuretic and/or on a low salt diet? Are they at all helpful for MAV? I’ve been on a diruretic since August when the doctor told me I have atypical MM. Two months later he told me I don’t have it and I can discontinue the diuretic. However, I chose to keep taking it since I didn’t have any attacks during that time and thought that may be the reason. I have since had another vertigo attack and two possible ones. It is hard to say if the diuretic and low salt is making a difference or not as I have no way of knowing whether or not I would have had more attacks if not being on one. So I’m wondering if these generally help MAV or not. At this point I am not willing to stop in case it actually is helping. (definitely hasn’t helped with the motion sensitivity problem) Thanks!
I don’t recall ever reading anywhere that a diuretic or low-salt diet helps with MAV. HOWEVER, I had the same experience as you with a MM diagnosis and a diuretic prescription. The diuretic DID help me. I don’t know why. My crazy guess is it lowers the fluid volume and therefore the pressure in the blood vessels of our heads. I no longer take a diuretic because I follow a low-carb diet (Atkins), which has a natural diuretic effect. It helps my MAV I believe due to the diuretic effect and the fact that it stabilizes my blood sugar. I am 100% positive there is something to the diuretic and MAV, but again I have never read any literature supporting it. I just have personal experience.
Have you had an ECOG test done? That is the only test that can really do any sort of decent job for testing miniere’s other than a hearing test looking for the typical patterns.
Diuretics perse don’t necessarily work for MAV but acetazolamide does, due to another action, not the action of the diuretic. I forget the term. And there is no reason for a low-salt diet to work for MAV as salt has no action for increasing MAV symptoms unless you have some sort of sensitivity to MAV. in fact, some salt is usually beneficial for increasing blood volume, and preventing orthostatic hypotention (dizziness upon standing). But if you have miniere’s, increasing salt will increase symptoms of course. and ECOG test is usually pretty good at identifiying miniere’s. It’s an easy test, no dizziness involved. I had it done because one of my MAV symptoms if stuffy ears. It happens sometimes but it’s a confusing symptom with miniere’s sometimes. This helped sort things out. I did the low salt and diuretic as well and thought it was helping a while as well. But after a while, I stopped it. I don’t go crazy on salt these days, but I don’t go out of my way to avoid it either, as low salt is just a recipe for dizziness for most people as there won’t be enough blood volume to keep you from getting dizzy when you stand up. Anyway, if you can get the test done, it may help to sort things out. But miniere’s is rare. Very rare. Migraine is the more likely culprit
Rich
When I recieved my MAV diagnoses, I was told to quit taking the dieretic I was taking for a misdiagnoses of MM immediately. The doctor didn’t explain why, I was GUESSING that dieretics may aggravate migraines. I still remained on the low salt diet though as I found it is an easy way to reduce MSG from my diet.
Brian
I was given diuretics back in October. I was misdiagnosed with Menniere’s. My ENT said I had Menniere’s due to one of his tests, I think it was an ECOG. I had a reading of 38% ratio in my left ear and 34% in the right. Dr. Hain said it would have to be a threshold of 50% to be Menniere’s. The diuretics did not help me at all. I too am still following a low salt diet. I guess I don’t have to though. I’m not sure why I never stopped that. I guess I thought I had to keep it up. It is good to know from other posts that I don’t have to watch my salt intake so carefully.
If you end up as a hybrid MAV/MM diagnosis (like me), the typical diuretic prescribed, triamterene, will probably exacerbate migraines. Just sticking to low salt—less than 2 grams–should suffice.
There are some natural alternatives as far as diuretics go. I’ve used parsley and dandelion, and parsley seems to work better for me. Both don’t dehydrate the body as severely as triamterene, thus they shouldn’t exacerbate migraines as badly either. They also have some decent health benefits.
As usual, ask a doc before giving either a try. People react differently.
I would love to hear that I don’t have to stick to this low salt diet anymore. I am so sick of eating cardboard. I’m avoiding a lot of yummy foods because I’m trying to stay with an anit-migraine, anti-MM and anti-cholesterol diet. There really isn’t much left.
It doesn’t seem to be making me any worse, but I’m not really sure if it is making me better either.
MSDXD, I am afraid I am going to be like you with a dual diagnosis. It seems my servere vertigo is one problem and my constant motion sickness is another. The way they act it seems like they are 2 separate diseases.
I haven’t had an ECOG, no doctor has suggested it (and still am refusing the ENG). I was under the impression that unless you are actively having vertigo or at the least fullness in the ears it isn’t very accuarate. Any truth to that?
— Begin quote from “bookworm”
I would love to hear that I don’t have to stick to this low salt diet anymore. I am so sick of eating cardboard. I’m avoiding a lot of yummy foods because I’m trying to stay with an anit-migraine, anti-MM and anti-cholesterol diet. There really isn’t much left.
It doesn’t seem to be making me any worse, but I’m not really sure if it is making me better either.
MSDXD, I am afraid I am going to be like you with a dual diagnosis. It seems my servere vertigo is one problem and my constant motion sickness is another. The way they act it seems like they are 2 separate diseases.
I haven’t had an ECOG, no doctor has suggested it (and still am refusing the ENG). I was under the impression that unless you are actively having vertigo or at the least fullness in the ears it isn’t very accuarate. Any truth to that?
— End quote
MAV and MM can indeed be parallel ailments.
ECOG is tricky, but it’s the closest thing to getting an accurate hydrops diagnosis. The main suggestion I could make is to make sure you’re off the meds. the docs want you to be off prior to the test. The other is to make sure that you have a very, very experienced professional conducting the test.
Hain covers ECOG pluses & minuses well. Personally, I think a “salt-loaded” ECOG makes sense.
dizziness-and-balance.com/testing/ecog.html
Here’s another link Hain refers to in the article from menieresinfo.com
Something I forgot to mention, part of the reason that I remained on the low salt diet is that we (my family and I) made so many changes to our diet to find things with flavor that we can no longer tolerate salty foods. My boys won’t eat their vegetables at school becuase they taste yucky, but at home, they will gobble them down. Yes, a lot of foods with out salt taste nasty or not as flavorful as you may be used to, but once you get used to the low salt, you realize how much of the real taste of the food you have never tasted because it was covered up in salt. When ever I eat somebody else’s cooking now, I have a problem tasting the food through all of the salt that came in the can and boxed foods they used, plus the salt they added while cooking.
I was under the impression that over 35% on the ecog was endolymphatic hydrops or menieres. Mine was 35% and I was told that I had it. This was in Oxford. Then I went to Cambridge for a second opinion from a top man who did surgery and he looked at the results and said, no I didnt have it but probably had an inner ear lesion. There was no doubt I was getting constant migraine because of flashing lights and pain. I tend to think some of us just have both.
I kept a diary over the years and took several different diuretics on different occasions. Looking back, I had constant bad migraine when I was on all of them. I believe they widen the blood vessels. I wont take them now.
It seems we have trouble with anything that widens the blood vessels and anything that constricts the blood vessels, it seems to me that we have unstable blood vessels perhaps?? Dont know what your thoughts are on this.
Best Wishes
Christine
— Begin quote from “cmoc”
It seems we have trouble with anything that widens the blood vessels and anything that constricts the blood vessels, it seems to me that we have unstable blood vessels perhaps?? Dont know what your thoughts are on this.
— End quote
That’s pretty much how migraine works. Blood vessels first contract, then become inflamed and dilate (widen) which then causes the pain (or, in many cases here, other symptoms).
If I’m wrong, then it’s not far off… given that the current theories are correct, of course.
I’m not exactly sure how 24/7 symptoms work, but there can be multiple ways. Constantly dilated vessels (? no idea if this happens), inner ear damage that needs compensation by VRT, and I’m sure there are other ideas. Note that this last paragraph is mostly speculation, whereas the first was more “fact”.