Article: Why Dizziness is Still a Medical Mystery

[kestrell]

Kes: I began getting vestibular migraines a few months into the pandemic--I had already been treated for standard migraines for over a decade--and my description goes like this: imagine being stuck on the most nausea-inducing ride in the amusement park for two hours, and every time you think it's slowing down, it starts up again. I haven't heard of anyone else experiencing the level of intense nausea that I do. I accidentally came across the info that magnesium supplements can help alleviate migraines, and since starting to take magnesium about a year ago, at least the severe nausea seems to have been alleviated, although I still get the vertigo migraines, just less intensely.
So, my recommendation: try magnesium supplements, as they have many positive benefits (I've heard this from a number of nurses and doctors, and there are also studies).

Article:

Balance disorders like vertigo can be devastating for patients—but they’re often invisible to the doctors who treat them.
By Shayla Love

October 10, 2023

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/why-dizziness-is-still-a-mystery#:~:text=staff%20ruled%20out%20anything%20life,a%20sensation%2C%20not%20a%20disease.

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

My sympathies and congrats on finding something helpful!

Migraines are the pits.

[kestrell]

I would actually trade the nonpainful vestibular migraines for the painful kind. With the vertigo, it's difficult to even make it down the short flight of stairs from my attic room to the bathroom directly at the bottom of the stiars without having to hold onto both the railing and the wall, and the rest of the time I have to lie *perfectly* still, or else the nausea hits me again. But, like I said, the magnesium seems to alleviate most of the nausea at least so, if there is a goddess of magnesium, I totally worship at her temple. I'm just pissed that I spent about two years with the migraines and nausea and my neurologist never suggested it at all, and when I mentioned I had begun taking it, she said, Oh yeah, there are studies about that, so she knew about it all along. WTF??

A sad truth has settled over our household:

[jesse_the_k]

that all medicos have survived an extinction event, and many will never recover.

Our primary care folks are all bailing. I had two skin cancers removed last December and when I scheduled a routine check in August the earliest was March 2024.

I am very glad the magnesium is helping you out. Being steady on your feet is such an excellent part of bipedalism.

[jesse_the_k]

And FYI, the graphic at the start of that article is enough to induce dizziness even if you're not prone to migraine.

[kestrell]

Yes: the New Yorker has alt descriptions of their article images, and many of them are described as "collage," which always makes me think that, even if the reader is sighted, there must be better choices. But the New Yorker's aesthetic is intellectual and artsy, so simple images are probably not their thing.

Not your fault just whining

[jesse_the_k]

Most of those collages are at least static. This one is a GIF: An endlessly twirling black and white spiral superimposed on a silhouette of a woman's head. When black spiral touches black head the head turns white, so it's flashing black and white endlessly (and I have a tool that supposedly suppresses GIFs after one play).