Does anyone of you think you may have Subclavian Steel Syndrome or Vertebral Artery Insufficiency as this condition has almost the same symptoms?

Vertigo, disequillibrium, imbalance, tinnitus etc. are the symptoms.

these seem to be related to arm use, and while the symptoms list as similar to MAV, they are actually just the symptoms of low blood pressure in the brain (which could be caused by 100s of things).

POTS and other blood pressure disorders will give you a similar list of symptoms, but not the photophobia, nystagmus, problems tracking moving objects with the eye, visual balance dependency, sense of motion when you are still, etc that you get with MAV.

I definitely suspect that. All my symptoms started right after I tilted my neck laterally and the pain that I felt was sky high I haven’t felt such pain in my life except when a bus ran over my knee when I was a kid and obviously toothache. But I’m having a really hard time trying to convince my neuros to consider investigating my neck arteries. They prefer to consider it a coincidence.

I’ve had the same issue with medics. Coincidences which were too obvious but they wouldn’t consider them.

What I found was that most were not good at working from first principles based on the situational facts. They just followed their normal regular diagnostic workup and diagnosed from there.

What this highlighted for me is that there are a lot of unknowns in this space. Medical science is far away from understanding the audio-vestibular anatomy perfectly.

I think you have to have confidence your body will do most of the fixing here and go with treatment for the time being to reduce symptoms.

That worked for me.

Whatever happened to my vestibular system and ear has mostly resolved. I’m not 100% but I’m pretty close and despite not having much confidence in many of my diagnoses it improved nonetheless.

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Similar to this, I went to a new Neuro-opthalmologist as mine came on after lifting weights and having a bad neck pull. I did have a scan to investigate vertebral artery dissection as they suspected it due to my symptoms; however, they did note this heals on its own if it does happen.

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Ask them what scan is required and encourage them to rule it out.

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putting a load in my arms (eg. Lifting weights) is a trigger to my symptoms. I’ll get myself a CTA scan asap. Fuck 'em!

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Yep, I kept seeing doctors until someone would do it…it’s worth the confirmation! Mine came out clear, interestingly.

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I got dizzy bending down and lifting boxes initially.