BC Balance and Dizziness

BC Balance and Dizziness supports, inspires and educates those affected by balance and dizziness disorders. This includes balance and dizziness sufferers, their family, friends, caregivers and medical professionals.

BC Balance and Dizziness

Supporting, inspiring and educating those affected by balance and dizziness disorders

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Have You Seen Our Information Sheets?

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Our volunteers and professional advisers have created a series of printer-friendly handouts (PDFs) that cover topics from BPPV to the difficulties of litigating balance and dizziness disorders. We encourage you to download and print these info sheets and pass them on to family, friends, co-workers, employers, Human Resources, clinics, health professionals and anyone else who could benefit from this information.

  1. Balance and Dizziness: The Visual Connection
  2. BPPV
  3. Clinical Tests of Vestibular Function
  4. Contemplative Practices
  5. Diagnostic Services
  6. Health Professionals Who Can Help You Deal with Balance & Dizziness Disorders
  7. I’m Dizzy: How Can a Primary Care Physician Help?
  8. Litigating Balance and Dizziness Disorders
  9. Migraine and Dizziness
  10. Tinnitus and Hyperacusis

Click here for more detail on each information sheet.

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Face your Fears… and Risk Getting Better!

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In 1992, an operation that restored the loss of hearing in my right ear left me with vertigo. And this completely changed my life. For instance, I had participated in the Vancouver Sun Run three times, but now I clung to my husband on walks. And I could no longer dance, something I’d always enjoyed.

Suggestions about water exercise classes were made, but I'm a non-swimmer with a fear of water, and, because of the vertigo, just walking along the water's edge made me dizzy.

Years passed and my life went on cautiously, until one day we were involved in a car accident. Again, water therapy was suggested to help my recovery. The physiotherapist and I discussed my fear and my problem with vertigo around moving water, so the sessions were held in a small private pool with water only up to our waist. I would remain upright at all times. With that kind of reassurance, I decided that I just might be able to do this.

I had started my therapy clutching the railing or the side of the pool, but, after fourteen sessions, the physiotherapist told me we were going to walk backwards in the water and talk at the same time. Of course I told her this was never going to happen, but, to my complete surprise, I was able to do it.

Although these sessions were booked as a result of the car accident, they were a blessing in disguise, because my feeling of oncoming vertigo in the water had lessened considerably as a result. - Shirley York, Vancouver, BC

Click here to find out how to submit your story!

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An Inaccurate Diagnosis of Your Vestibular Disorder Can Compromise Your Insurance Claim

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My story starts when my world turned upside down after a significant head injury at work. I immediately had vision problems. A week later I got vertigo and was left with constant dizziness. I couldn't move my head and felt nauseated all the time. I couldn't walk in a straight line, noise and movement made me worse and I was in a complete fog. I also had severe tinnitus and face pain.

Since my injury happened at work, I had to go to a head-injury clinic funded by Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB). The occupational therapist assigned to me there wrote reports about me based on assumptions not on assessments. The reports included wording that suggested I was exaggerating my poor balance and that my symptoms could be caused by malingering. One report also said that the therapist strongly did not suspect a vestibular problem. When I questioned the treatment I had received, I was kicked out of the clinic’s head-injury programme and WCB denied my claim.

Fortunately, at a hospital-based testing clinic, I was eventually diagnosed with bilateral vestibular hypofunction, severe tinnitus and hyperacusis, convergence insufficiency, temporo-mandibular joint syndrome (TMJ) and post-concussion, as well as other injuries.

The stress from dealing with the initial reports and all the ensuing WCB appeals almost did me in. It took years to get accurate diagnoses and help. But, in the end, I won all appeals, the therapist received disciplinary action from their licensing college and I received 100% disability from WCB.

Based on my initial bad experience, I suggest that if you go for vestibular therapy (especially if it’s a funded WCB clinic), make sure you get an hour of vestibular therapy with assessments during each visit and read your reports before they’re sent to any insurance company.

And never, ever get intimidated about complaining. The various licensing colleges are there to protect the public. Documenting everything will only help your case. Complaints about a practitioner are filed with the licensing college for life. Should the same practitioner get another complaint, the college will investigate and also consider your complaint in making future decisions.

My advice is to hang in there, get a proper assessment from a hospital-based testing clinic and be proactive in your own healthcare. A successful insurance claim could depend on it! – Name Withheld to Protect the Identity of the Writer

Click here to find out how to submit your story!

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How Earplugs and Vestibular Exercises Gave Me Back My Life!

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I have had Ménière's disease with balance, auditory and visual challenges for the last 15 years. The affected ear has only 1% hearing and no word recognition.

Noise is one of my biggest challenges. Large groups, restaurants, meetings, etc. cause nausea, dizziness and balance problems.

I discussed this with a close friend who has severe hearing impairment and he had some valuable suggestions. One was earplugs that musicians wear which reduce noise by 15 decibels. I now use one of these in my normal ear. It reduces the background noise in the room, which allows me to carry on a normal conversation. In my damaged ear, in which I get a screeching sound caused by music and female voices, I have a noise-eliminating earplug.

I carry these with me at all times and insert them when necessary. I can now enjoy concerts and opera. And large groups are much more tolerable, although I do have to move into a quiet area for a break at times.

With these earplugs I am able to live an almost normal life.

I also want to say thank you to BC Balance and Dizziness for introducing me to vestibular exercises. I found a physiotherapist trained in these exercises in my town and I use the exercises regularly to control my balance issues. They really work! - Nickola, Ottawa, Ontario

When Dizziness Strikes, an Understanding Employer Can Make All the Difference

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My journey with balance and dizziness issues began in November, 1996. I had just recovered from the common cold when out of the blue I began to have dizzy spells accompanied by severe nausea.

My first attack happened at work and I had to lie down on the floor for two hours until it subsided. I was then able to drive home and make an appointment with my doctor for the following day. My doctor diagnosed me with labyrinthitis and told me that it would go away in a few weeks.

Unfortunately, my attacks became more frequent and more intense as time went by. They would usually start when I got out of bed in the morning and lasted for several hours. After an attack subsided, I was left feeling very fatigued or with a severe headache.

I went back to my doctor and he referred me to an ENT specialist who confirmed my diagnosis of labyrinthitis. But four months passed and none of my symptoms had changed.

I was regularly absent from work and often wouldn't be able to get into the office until noon. Fortunately I had a very understanding employer. If I could get my work done during the days I felt well enough, I didn't need to worry about having a job. Since I usually felt unwell in the mornings, he changed my schedule so that I could start at noon and finish at eight. This took a massive amount of stress off me since I was very concerned about supporting my family.

Since my illness was not improving, my doctor referred me to two ENTs and a neurologist to rule out other central nervous system diseases. The neurologist finally diagnosed me with Vestibular Neuritis and said that the cold virus had probably damaged my vestibular nerve. He guessed that the damaged portion of the nerve could re-grow over time and my body would be able to compensate for the deficit.

It took four years for my symptoms to subside and my life to get back to some form of normal. Occasionally, I still get a slight dizzy sensation when walking down narrow hallways or when crowds of people are walking towards me. I can't fly anymore as cabin pressure changes might affect the damaged vestibular nerve. Nevertheless, I feel fortunate to be better and I sympathise with anyone afflicted by a vestibular illness. - Andrew Veuger, Victoria, BC

Click here to find out how to submit your story!

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Why Did BC Balance and Dizziness Move Their Website to a New Hosting Company?

Oh, the stress of it all! On Friday evening, May 4, 2018, the BC Balance and Dizziness website started acting strangely.

The first sign was an "Error 500: Internal Server Error" message that kept bringing down the website, making it inaccessible every few minutes. As the Webmaster for BC Balance and Dizziness, this was something I couldn't ignore!

Here is what people were seeing instead of our website!

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That particular error suggested that the problem could have one of several sources, but there was no clear direction or solution.

When I delved into the issue, I discovered that our site was suddenly using up to 26 processes, an alarming number. The limit for our shared hosting account was 25, which is why the error message kept popping up. I spoke to the hosting company, but they had no solution except "here's a link to an article on optimizing your site "or "you can upgrade to a Virtual Private Server" -- yeah, for a lot more money!

The only reason for the upgrade to a Virtual Private Server (VPS) would be that the number of processes would no longer be an issue. In my mind, that was a bandaid, not a fix. The sudden increase in processes was a symptom of something that needed to be addressed. Their other suggestion was, "Talk to a developer." Uh, easier said than done. While sometimes I think the Board members find what I do with the website somewhat magical, I'm just a Web designer, not a developer. Finding a developer is not something to be taken lightly, nor would their services be cheap.

So, the first thing I did was to use the information in the optimization articles suggested by the hosting company to see if I could minimize the problem and give us some breathing space. But nothing I tried and nothing the hosting company tried at my prompting worked. By Saturday evening, the site was brought down permanently by the hosting company for using too many resources. Because we were on shared hosting, our excessive use of resources would affect other sites hosted on the same server.

Then I thought maybe we could upgrade temporarily to VPS while we tried to find the source of the problem, and then we could downgrade again. But VPS isn't cheap and the hosting company revealed that we could not get a refund upon downgrading.

At this point, I started to get really annoyed with the lack of support and my gut was telling me to look for a different hosting company. So, I went to the Facebook page of some really nice, trustworthy folks who are well-versed in all things Web and asked for their recommendation. The recommendation I got was the one I expected, so that felt right. I immediately emailed instructions to our treasurer and he bought the new hosting (we had already discussed this expense, so he was prepared for the purchase).

So that was all fine and dandy, but at 11 PM on Sunday I woke up with a vertigo attack. I hadn't had one in many months, so this was unexpected. Fortunately, after two Gravol and a few hours sleep, in the morning I was stable enough to operate the computer and write emails, albeit fuzzy-headed and feeling rather miserable.

On top of that, the website was still down, because the files, the Webmail and the database still had to be migrated to the new host. The Domain Name Servers also needed changing. Finally, all that was done... and then we waited. It can take up to 72 hours for a site to propagate on the Web. This would not have been an issue if our site had been up and running on the other host, but our site was down! It took until Monday evening before the site came up on the new host. I was ecstatic at that point.

Then I went to look at the processes, afraid of what I would find...

But, lo and behold, we were running only two processes. I went to bed Monday night, still a bit dizzy, but happy. On Tuesday morning, we were still running only two processes and our site was also loading faster.

While I still wasn't feeling completely well, my stress levels had dropped from ten down to one or two. Quite an improvement! Why still a little stress? Well, a few things still needed to be checked. Was our SSL certificate still valid? Apparently. Could I reactivate all our plugins without issue?

I had deactivated all plugins temporarily as part of my optimization process while still on the original host. That hadn't fixed the problem, but I still hadn't reactivated all of our plugins. Most of our plugins run the front end of the site, but some are for our convenience on the back end. The back-end plugins were the ones I had not reactivated yet.

Slowly, I reactivated the back-end plugins one by one, watching for any increase in the processes. When we showed three processes, I started to worry a little, but all three processes were legitimate and not of the crazy variety I had seen on the previous host. Finally, I reactivated and set up the security plugin which was the major back-end plugin. All went well and I could finally relax.

Because I had some knowledge of our website and how it should work, and because I have many years of experience solving my own and other people's software problems, my gut feeling about what we should do was not pure intuition. This was one of those times when I was pretty sure I could trust my gut... and, fortunately, it turned out to be the right choice!

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How a BC Balance and Dizziness Meeting Changed My Life

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It used to be that when I flew in an airplane I ended up being dizzy and vomiting. It first happened in England while visiting a favourite cousin and his wife, which caused me to be known thereafter as their guest from Hell!

I had asked at several of the BC Balance and Dizziness meetings if any of the speakers had a suggestion about dizziness and flying, and finally a young woman doctor who had just returned from studying in Australia answered my question by saying, "Sit by the window. That way the brain can see that you're moving."

I had previously wanted the freedom of an aisle seat, but her suggestion worked and I can now fly without getting dizzy. Someday, I would like the opportunity to tell her how grateful I am!

A few years later I visited my cousin again, but, sadly, by then he was dying in hospital and his wife was suffering from Alzheimer's, so I was never able to redeem myself by becoming their guest from Heaven, instead of from Hell. - Wendy Noble, Vancouver, BC

Click here to find out how to submit your story!

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Never Stop Looking for Improvement: a Possible New Treatment for Balance Issues and Other Chronic Neurological Symptoms

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After a serious accident, I suffered from multiple, debilitating vestibular issues for several years, but I never sat back and gave up. I was always trying different therapies and looking for ways to help myself.

One day my old boss told me about a clinical trial for people who had suffered a head injury. I applied and was one of thirty people accepted into the trial out of 800 who were screened.

In the trial, we were testing The Portable Neuromodulation Stimulator (PoNS®) Device while working on our balance. The PoNS® device stimulates your tongue which stimulates your brain while you do specific balance exercises. It worked and I did improve my balance. As a matter of fact, during this amazing program with their amazing therapists, I experienced significant improvement in my symptoms for the first time since my accident.

I still have tinnitus, vision problems, dizzy spells and vertigo. But now I have hope and I am patiently waiting for the FDA approval of the PoNS® device so I can get even more improvements. Specifically, I hope that PoNS® can help with my vision problems and tinnitus.

PoNS® really works and it could help millions in the future. With a vestibular problem even the smallest improvement is life changing. I truly believe the PoNS® device will give us all a chance for improvement.

So, always be looking for ways to help yourself, watch for the FDA approval of the PoNS® device and enjoy the improvement. - Jacquie Mason, Port Moody, BC

Find out more about PoNS®: http://heliusmedical.com/index.php/divisions/neurohabilitation/the-pons-device

Click here to find out how to submit your story!

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How I Cope with My Balance Issues while Walking Two Dogs!

In this photo, Banner and Lucy are not wearing their prong collars because we weren't walking that day; they had been running beside my trike on their special Bike Tow Leash, another great tool.

My name is Andrea Wilson, I’m the Webmaster for BC Balance and Dizziness and I have vestibular issues. Recently we asked our members and website visitors to send us their stories about their own experiences with imbalance and dizziness. So, to get the ball rolling, I thought I would share my story about how I safely walk two dogs without falling over them!

When I only had one dog, it wasn’t too bad; I managed not to trip over her on walks, albeit with many close calls. When I added a second dog, I realized I needed to up my game!

Both dogs wear a flat buckle collar but the dogs don’t respond to them without a lot of tugging and pulling. You’ve all seen a dog dragging its owner down the street on a flat buckle collar. Nope, I needed a better tool than that to keep me from tripping over the dogs when I drift into their space or start to tip in their direction.

A harness wouldn’t help as it wouldn’t give the dogs enough information, fast enough to move out of my way. And harnesses actually encourage pulling, think dog sledding! Nope, that wasn’t the answer, for sure.

Through my research of many dog trainers’ websites and Facebook pages, I heard the term “steering wheel for dogs.” When I realized they were talking about the vicious-looking prong collars often seen on pitbulls and other intimidating breeds, I didn’t think that was the right choice. However, not one to take anything at face value, I read a lot of information and discovered that prong collars are one of the most humane tools on the market, as long as you choose the right manufacturer and learn how to put them on your dog properly. So, I ordered two Hermsprenger collars.

When the collars arrived, I put them on my dogs as directed and we headed out. Wow, what a difference… a steering wheel is right! The dogs responded immediately to the slightest pressure on the prong collars. So, since that day forward, I have been 100% confident walking two dogs, knowing that, if I start to drift or tip in their direction, I can quickly steer them out of my path. Yes, my dogs look like mini-pitbulls now, but who cares? We're all safe and that’s what counts! - Andrea Wilson, Port Coquitlam, BC

Click here to find out how to submit your story!

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Books about Balance

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Understanding our very delicate sense of balance...

Whether or not you suffer from dizziness or vertigo, imbalance is an issue for most people with vestibular problems. The vestibular system is responsible for keeping us upright, oriented to our surroundings and aware of where we are spatially. When this system is dysfunctional, life can be everything from mildly uncomfortable to miserable indeed. If you suffer from imbalance, it may be helpful for your family to read these books, so they can better understand what you are going through.

BC Balance and Dizziness has compiled a list of books about imbalance and dizziness here.

Balance: A Dizzying Journey Through the Science of Our Most Delicate Sense by Carol Svec

Balance: A Dizzying Journey Through the Science of Our Most Delicate Sense by Carol Svec (2017)

Follow award-winning science and health writer Carol Svec through various facilities as she talks with leading scientists doing state-of-the-art balance research. Svec translates their most fascinating findings for the layperson in a way that is highly entertaining and accessible. Along the way she cites case studies of people whose lives are affected by balance dysfunction, explains how research is being applied to help them, and provides a glimpse at what potentially life-changing advances may be on the horizon.

Balance, In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie

Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense by Scott McCredie (2007)

A scientific, historical and practical exploration of how balance works. From simple motion sickness to astronauts’ “space stupids” and from fetal somersaults to the Flying Wallendas, McCredie explores the physiology of equilibrium.

Finding Balance, Healing from a Decade of Vestibular Disorders by Sue Hickey

Finding Balance: Healing from a Decade of Vestibular Disorders by Sue Hickey (2011)

The author addresses her journey through over a decade of illness, from searching for a diagnosis, through years of treatment, and finally to rebuilding a life within the confines of what her dizziness will allow.  Medical information in the book reviewed for accuracy by vestibular specialists.

Terra Infirma, A Life Unbalanced by Anna Jean Mallinson

Terra Infirma: A Life Unbalanced by Anna Jean Mallinson (2007)

A moving personal account of the author’s toxic reaction to the antibiotic Gentamicin and how she learned to function without a working vestibular system.

 BC Balance and Dizziness has compiled a list of books about imbalance and dizziness here.

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