About BPPV

Since my last post on BPPV, I have received emails of concern about this ailment and so I am blogging away about this medical nuisance.

BPPV or Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo is a not so life threatening problem but it might give you a lot of worries if not diagnosed. The first time I had this problem, I thought that maybe I had some type of brain disease and that thought put me into an abyss of worries. On May 2nd of 2010, I woke up with this weird sensation in which my whole bedroom was spinning so rapid that I had to shut my eyes. I guessed it had happened of staying awake late because I had slept quite late that night. But even though I opened my eyes after about fifteen minutes, the vertigo was still there. I found that I couldn't move my head in any direction because the dizzines would accelerate when I did that. The thought, when the dizziness did not go away after a whole day, was," Was I going to be like this for the rest of my life?" I got depressed, the smile on my face had vanished. What was this I was suffering from?? A brain tumour?? Or some form of psychiatric problem?? The answer I got from Google evenmore depressed me because it said that chronic headspin could be because of tumour in the brain!!!! 

Only on the third day, when I typed in the accurate symptoms in Google did I realise that I had fallen victim to a mysterious ailment called BPPV. Google said that BPPV was not life threatening!!!! This brought back the smile on my face!!!! The accurate symptom was that I felt quite giddy if I tilted my face towards the left. So you can imagine the consequences; I couldn't roll over to the left while sleeping, I couldn't bend down at all( that means no head baths!!), I couldn't concentrate on moving objects( that made me feel quite giddy), I couldn't do any sporty thing at all and even though I refrained from doing so many things, I was constantly feeling dizzy and the feeling never went away. During the nights I had to sleep like a log, never rolling over to any side. I got informed that it's called BPPositional Vertigo because of it's peculiar characteristic of inducing vertigo when the head gets rolled to the affected side, left or right or in some rare cases both.

The cause of this I found was due to some stones called ocotonia being displaced in our inner ear. These stones help to maintain the equilibrium of the body and due to some reasons they shift within the tubes of our ear.The triggering factors of BPPV might be staying awake late into the night, some chemicals being placed into the ear etc etc. The problem can't be cured with any sort of medicine as I found but can be treated with some physical manuevers which consist of letting the stones roll back to their original position. That manuever is known as The Epley Manuever and needs to be done by an experienced physician. I feel the patient needs to take some anti-vomiting tabs before the maneuver as it includes rolling the head into the affective position for about ten minutes!!!!!

My BPPV went away after two weeks but that duration was like a hell for me. If you or anyone near you has that problem then I want to pray that you have a strong heart, there's no need to worry because it won't take away your life. It has to pass and it will pass, at the most within a month...............................