But what is VM?
The first thing to recognise is that a diagnosis is really just a class of condition and is usually defined by a set of symptoms. It is more often than not defined by what is going on at a cellular or molecular level especially where medicine hasn’t got that far yet. And in vestibular medicine …
I’m an engineer and a PhD and believe me I’m very analytical and when something like this hits you you want logical answers and answers now in order to be best equipped to fight it.
The sad fact is that the science simply doesn’t exist to explain these conditions in technical detail with certainty.
There are just theories, dogma and conjecture (including my theories). Some come and go with fashion: in the last few decades, similar sets of symptoms have been called ETD, Perilymph Fistula, a form of Menieres, Secondary Hydrops, MAV, VM and now PPD. Many of them are flawed in surprisingly obvious ways.
For example, it is never explained why VM sufferers get positional vertigo. A migraine does not switch off and on with angle, it’s clearly something involving the inner ear, the only organ that can provide such a sense, yet some of these apparently intelligent doctors seem to completely ignore this fact.
Imho we can be too accepting of their incomplete responses and we should be more demanding.
Of the many doctors I met, one of them was a professor and chair at UCLH. He admitted: “we don’t know how the inner ear works”. That was pretty sobering.
The ray of hope are the treatment protocols, developed with science, but it is very important to work out what helps you or what might be exacerbating your condition, personally, because everyone’s body, life and experience is different, though there are many common factors. People do improve and do get better, but I suggest that’s often down the patients actions and the patients body working through it.
imho any comorbidity might offer a very big clue, so don’t dismiss doctors who suggest such a thing, but perhaps on a positive note that might help provide an avenue for investigation and resolution?
A good example would be diabetes, actually known to cause dizziness, vertigo and hearing loss. And diabetes is more often than not a completely reversible condition. Reverse the diabetes and you can probably reverse the impacts on the inner ear.
Stress can cause tinnitus (and worse). Eliminate the stress …
If you are interested, you can see my theorising in #research-theories-controversies once you reach Trust Level 2 to see how I’ve gone through various stages of thought.
