Just letting people know that I moved the Meniere’s forum into the archive where all older posts remain as usual. As a standalone forum it wasn’t doing much because, frankly, I think the MM.org site covers it very well already and most end up there where there are lots of others with MM to bounce ideas off of. Traffic there is very high. However, MAV and MM overlap like crazy and I think that there are a large percentage of misdiagnosed people out there who don’t have MM but are dealing with something rooted in migraine. Also, there are clearly those who do have MM and have migraine causing troubles on top of it – perhaps responsible for all of the daily misery we as chronic migraineurs put up with.
There’s one member here who does have both and has found that by treating the migraine, the MM seems to be of no major daily consequence that is except for the unilateral hearing loss.
So in saying the above, I see no reason why both people with MAV (migraine-based illness) and Meniere’s cannot share the same general discussion area to simplify things here and have everyone contributing together. As new evidence rolls in from the literature for both conditions I’ll post it in the discussion area if applicable.
Scott your are right on. there is a HUGE overlap and not much of a difference . Unilateral Hearing loss is the only key symptom that you can tell the difference. Treatments can be similar but there are some treatments like a diuretic that are used for MM and not for Migraine. However a lot of the treatments and triggers both overlap as well. Whoknows one day they will be under the same umbrella . i happen to be one of he lucky ones who have both… This weather in NY in the Fall really sets me off… I will send you anything I get as well as far as rsearch.
It is true that these two conditions overlap. I had abdominal migraine as a child and was carsick. Started getting zig zag lines in my early teens and no headaches. Late teens, severe vertigo attacks, diagnosed with menieres that had burnt itself out they found a 54% parasis in one ear on the caloric test plus a couple of other minor abnormalities. More vertigo attacks, more tests at 3 different hospitals, produced diagnosis of basilar migraine. I was attending ENT clinics and neurologists at more than one hospital. Then an ECOG test showed over 64% and produced the worse vertigo attack of my life, diagnosis menieres, another hospital, endolymphatic hydrops, neurologist, vestibular migraine, another hospital, inner ear lesion.
After the last nasty tests and only making it through half of the caloric and two letters going to my dr. one saying there was an abnormality and the tests had to be repeated and the other saying there wasnt a problem with the ears, I gave up.
I had 3 perforated eardrums in early childhood. I believe that with people that already have some damage to the ears, the migraine affects the ears, also, I think migraine can cause damage to the ears.
Problem with this is they give you diuretics for menieres, I tried 4 and they all gave me bad migraine. (Looked it up and diuretics expand blood vessels). I went on a very strict no salt diet and felt a lot worse, I then found out my blood pressure was low and this was making it worse. I eat salt as I want now and I am better than I was when I wasnt eating it.
My diary over many years showed the severe vertigo attacks nearly always came before or after a bad migraine. I think keeping a diary helped me a lot.
