You roll over in bed and the ceiling takes off. Maybe it’s the driveway instead, where you crank your head around to back out and your stomach lurches. After a couple of those, you start dreading mornings. The first stop is usually your doctor or urgent care, and good, you should go there first. But once the big stuff is ruled out, a lot of people in Maricopa end up with us. Why would you go to a physical therapy clinic for that? Because two of the most common causes of dizzy spells are things we work on every week.
Two Common Culprits
One is the inner ear. There are tiny crystals in there that sometimes break loose and drift into the wrong spot. We call it BPPV. When you tip your head a certain way, they move, and the room spins for a bit. Lying down, rolling over, and looking up at a high shelf are the big ones. It usually stops in less than a minute.
The other is your neck. Feel the bumps right where your neck meets your skull. The little joints under there are loaded with nerves. Your brain counts on them to know how your head is tilted. Get those joints stiff, from a fender bender or ten years of reading the paper with your chin on your chest, and the brain gets confused. It doesn’t spin so much. You just feel off, swimmy, a little unsteady. Neck pain and a headache at the back of the head often come with it.
Some people have both. That’s why we check both.
What We Do
We’ll ask a bunch of questions first. Does it last seconds or hours? What sets it off? Does your neck hurt? Then we watch your eyes while you follow our finger. Your eyes move in certain ways when the inner ear is the problem. We may have you lie back with your head turned to one side, and we’ll check how your neck moves.
After that, it depends:
- If it’s crystals, you lie back while we turn your head a few specific ways, and they roll back to where they live.
- A stiff neck means hands-on work up near the skull, plus chin tucks you’ll get sick of.
- Some people stay a little woozy, so they stare at a sticky note on the wall while shaking their head no, a few times a day.
- If you’re wobbly on your feet, we add heel raises and side steps at the counter.
BPPV can clear up in a visit or two. Dizziness from the neck hangs on longer, more like three to six weeks. Do the homework. It’s maybe ten minutes, most of it sitting on the side of the bed, and the people who blow it off are the ones we see again in the spring.
If dizzy spells keep throwing off your day, call Modern Medicine of Sun Lakes, AZ. We’ll figure out where they’re coming from and help you feel steady again.
