Have you ever spun around in a swivel chair for a few moments and then stopped suddenly? The world spins around you. You’re not sure which direction is left or right, up or down. It feels like you just finished an entire bottle of wine. The spinning makes you feel nauseated as you try and make it to the bathroom, clutching onto any furniture close by.
This is the reality of life for many working age people. Vertigo and dizziness symptoms appear more and more commonly as people get older. For Australians older than 50, more than 36% reported having vertigo and dizziness. [1] The symptoms affect women at significantly higher rates than men. [2] The graph below shows the age at which people were diagnosed with Meniere's disease at a clinic in Chicago. Meniere's disease is one of the main causes of vertigo and dizziness.
Figure 1: Meniere's Disease Diagonsis for Frequency vs Age [3]
Vertigo is classed as a symptom as opposed to an illness. Conventional medicine has listed the most common causes as:
- Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), which occurs when calcium particles clump together in the inner ear. This clumping affects messages sent from the inner ear to the brain, causing people to lose their sense of balance.
- Meniere’s disease, which is thought to be caused by a buildup of fluid and changing pressure in the ear.
From a conventional medicine viewpoint, vertigo and dizziness arises from problems in the inner ear. However, Chinese medicine theory points to the stomach as the source. In this system, each organ system is linked together by a meridian. They are essentially ‘energy highways’ which are invisible and flow within the body. The stomach meridian (pictured below) starts from an individual’s second toe and travels up the legs, through the stomach, up the torso and to the head.
From a Chinese medicine standpoint, many people today live unhealthy lifestyles through:
everyday stress from work, studying, etc
poor diets through excess consumption of fried, greasy, spicy or sugary foods and cold food and drinks.
According to Chinese medicine theory, an individual’s stress and poor diet is damaging to their stomach. Picture an individual at a stressful event such as an intense exam, car crash, etc. Alternatively, a traumatic event such as the loss of a loved one would cause individuals to lose their appetites or feel sick in the stomach.
Due to the meridian linking the stomach to the head, this damage causes varying symptoms of vertigo, dizziness, head heaviness and morning drowsiness. The symptoms depend on the individual.
References
[1] The Australian Society of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery Limited (ASOHNS), "Inquiry into the Hearing Health and Wellbeing of Australia," Sydney, 2016.
[2] J. Guerra and J. Devesa, "Causes and treatment of idiopathic benign paroxysmal positional vertigo based on endocrinological and other metabolic factors," Journal of Otology, vol. 15, no. 4, 2020.
[3] T. C. Hain, "Epidemiology of Menieres Disease," 2021.