what exactly is vertigo

Hi, I'm Dr. Drury with The Upper Cervical Spine Center. So what exactly is vertigo? Well, with vertigo, the symptoms are often dizziness, lightheadedness, and it can sometimes lead to vomiting. It's kind of like being seasick, but really quick oftentimes.

So what are the causes of vertigo?

Well, what we have found is most of the time it actually has to do with the inner ear. Now, I know a lot of times you go to the ENT, they check the ear, and they said there's nothing wrong with the ear. Well, what happens is the message from the ear has to be transmitted to the brain. The way that happens is through a nerve called the vestibular cochlear nerve. The vestibular part is balance; the cochlear part is the hearing. There are two separate branches as they leave the ear, and then they come together to become one nerve as it goes to the upper neck, to the brainstem, where it then goes up into the brain.

Well, what can happen is there's nothing wrong with the ear. Most of the time you go to the ENT, the ear looks perfectly fine, but somewhere between the ear and the brain, the message gets changed so that the brain gets a sensation of dizziness. Now actually what happens is it throws off all the other receptors because you ear is saying one thing, and the other ear is saying something else. Your eyes are telling the brain something else, and then the mechanoreceptors, which all of these tell the brain where it is in space is the message, gets confused at the brain, which makes the brain go into that vertigo and nausea. It's the same reflex that causes seasickness actually. So if you're looking out on a flat horizon, your eyes tell your brain that you're actually standing still, but the boat's moving, so your body feels you going up and down, fluid in your ears, and mechanoreceptors. So the different messages confuse the brain, thus giving you the dizziness, which ultimately can turn into nausea.

So what we have found

There's one place without some sort of gross pathology, like a tumor, or some sort of a broken bone or something, that can actually interfere with the message between the ear and the brain. It can thus create a change in what the brain interprets as normal, creating dizziness. It can often create ringing in the ears. It can often even interfere with the hearing itself, making it harder to hear, or creating a full sensation in the ear.

So if one of the top bones in the neck, it's called the atlas or axis, they're the top two bones, get misaligned, then that message between the ear and the brain gets interfered with, and it gets distorted then leading to the vertigo. So as upper cervical chiropractors, what we have found is if we can find the misalignment, then we can correct it perfectly, which is done best by an upper cervical doctor, and upper cervical specialist. Because they know there are 274 ways just those top two bones misalign, and the more perfect we get it corrected, the better it'll stay, and the better the hearing will improve, and the vertigo will improve, because what we're going to do is now, like taking your foot off the garden hose, we're actually going to allow the real actual message from the perfectly working ear to get to the brain unimpeded, unaltered, so now the brain gets the normal message, which goes along with the message that the rest of the body is sending to it, so that now the brain is no longer confused. The vertigo goes away. The nausea goes away. If associated, lack of hearing, tinnitus, and all of those things improve.

So if you've been having vertigo

Dizzy spells that come and go, or maybe it's constant, find an upper cervical doctor near you. Let them check and see, and maybe it's one of those top bones in your neck that's interfering with a message from the normal ear to the brain, creating the confusion in the brain, creating the dizziness, the vertigo. If so, if you do have an upper cervical misalignment, we can correct that, removing any interference, allowing the body to work the way it's intended to work, allowing it to heal.

Now just remember: everything in this universe has a cause and effect. Every effect has a cause. There's a reason why you have the vertigo. One thing I can guarantee you is that it's not a drug deficiency, so taking medications will never fix it. They might mask it, might make you feel better a little bit temporarily, but if you have a misalignment that's causing the vertigo, if you can find it and remove the cause, the effect goes away. The vertigo goes away. You feel better, and you longer have the dizziness, the nausea, etc.

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