It’s been a beautiful weekend here, and I’ve been enjoying doing lots of things outdoors. I try to spend as much time as possible outside when the weather’s nice, and I’m kind of an outside person by nature.

Most of my time was spent at the beach this weekend, which is certainly one of my favourite places to be. Yet it actually made me notice something about my balance that has really never occurred to me before…

When lying on my stomach and with my head at a 45 degree angle, I often get ‘drop attacks’ or feelings of sudden imbalance. The same goes for when my head is tilted at a 45 degree angle the other way.

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I took the long weekend off, which was nice, but today I’m having a particularly tough time with a particular sensation that I get (too often, unfortunately).

I’ve alternately heard them called “drop attacks”, “the startles”, “brain spasms” or a host of other names that I can’t really explain that well. It basically feels like the floor’s being pulled out from under you, and that you’re suddenly falling — and that you need to quickly regain your balance.

There’s occasionally the times where it manifests itself as a bit of a weird spacey feeling, which I had never gotten before the vestibular neuritis. The feeling is quite distracting, and it’s often difficult to concentrate (and it’s usually worse when I don’t get enough sleep or enough to eat).

Has anyone else experienced a similar sensation? I sometimes wonder if it’s psychological or physiological — is this my body actually experiencing something, or is my brain just suddenly freaked out about the potential dizziness it think it feels?

Well, it’s a long weekend here in Canada (a very long weekend for me, since July 1st is Canada Day, and I also took an extra day off on Monday). This usually means lots of travelling in the car, and for us dizziness sufferers, some uncomfortable times.

I thought I’d provide a quick list of things that seem to work well for me when I have to travel as far as keeping the dizziness at a minimum:

1. If at all possible, be the one driving. Strange as it may sound, I get much more dizzy when someone else is driving. I think it’s that I can’t anticipate the shifts in balance as quickly as when I have to pay attention to them.

2. Avoid caffeine and be wary of medications. Caffeine makes you jumpy and agitated, and is just going to make your dizziness worse. If you’re too tired and feel like you need caffeine to keep going, take a break instead (and a quick nap somewhere safe off the road if you can). Avoiding medications that make you drowsy is also an obvious one — being safe should be your first concern.

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Fortunately, when the weather improves, it always seems to help with my symptoms of imbalance — I don’t know if this is psychosomatic or if there actually is some physiological cause for it, but it definitely seems to be the case.

I don’t know if this is the case for anyone else, but I find clear, sunny weather is when my symptoms abate the most — and overcast, rainy and even chilly weather is when my symptoms are the worst.

I realize that sunny and clear summer weather is bound to improve both your mood and your general outlook on life (at least it certainly does for me), and in my case, more daylight during the summer hours is helpful as well.

But is there an actual link between weather and balance symptoms? Does anyone know of a link, or at least share these types of symptoms that improve/worsen based on the weather?

I mentioned before that the meclizine was really helping things. It would seem however, that for some reason, it’s no longer really helping very much at all.

I’ve frequently been waking up with very dizzy, falling sensations. It’s especially bad in the morning when I wake up — and it’s starting to drive me a little nuts.

It’s tough to deal with, especially when I thought I had somewhat of a solution with the meclizine. I’m still taking it, and it seems to keep things from getting overwhelmingly dizzy, but it’s not doing nearly what it was before.

The comment about these being referred to as “drop attacks” is right on the money. That’s exactly like what they feel like — one minute I’m sitting or standing comfortably doing something, the next I feel like I’m tumbling through space.

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I just got back from the gym, where I did some running on the treadmill and about another 15 minutes on the elliptical machine. I followed that with a bit of light weights, and a some stretching.

I’ve noticed that while I’m on the elliptical, or especially while I’m running, my balance seems to be horrible. Well, it’s not my balance itself exactly, it’s that I feel completely off balance.

And when I get off the treadmill, I actually feel like the room is spinning around — it takes about 5 minutes of walking around the room for the feeling to go away. But several hours later, I actually feel better than I did before I went to exercise. Then again, maybe I’m just pleased with myself that I went and got some exercise.

If you’ve been following my posts, you probably already know that I’ve had two distinct instances of severe vertigo in my life. I know there are other people who have had more than that, and I definitely feel for those who have had vertigo more often than that.

I do have to put up with lesser vertigo on a daily basis however, which usually leads me to avoid substances that change the way you feel (alcohol or caffeine for example).

However, before the onset of both episodes of my acute vertigo, I was consuming a far higher than average amount of alcohol in the week preceding the attacks. So the obvious question is, is there a relationship between the alcohol and the vertigo?

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Dizzy Dame has a great post about the difficulty of dealing with a condition that is essentially invisible to others. I completely agree that this condition is a really tough thing to explain to someone, especially when I function and act normally all the time.

I think it starts to make other people wonder if you’re really just making it up or think it’s all just in your head. For some people however, there are other very unfortunate side effects of a vestibular illness. Take my sister for example.

Like me, my sister was diagnosed with something that either vestibular neuritis or labyrinthitis, and she suffered from the same horrible vertigo that I did. Unfortunately though, she went completely deaf in that ear within a few days of being sick. Yep, that’s right — totally deaf in one ear. So while she’s totally lost her hearing, it would be pretty difficult for anyone to say she’s not really deaf.

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When I described my visit to the neurotologist recently, I mentioned that he prescribed me 12.5 milligrams of meclizine three times per day. This initially seemed like quite a bit to me — but after doing some research, I guess it’s pretty much the lowest dosage possible.

Meclizine, which is often sold under the brand names Bonine and Antivert, is both an antihistamine and an antiemetic (it prevents vertigo). Mine came in 25 mg tablets that I can break in half and tastes like some gross artificial berry that doesn’t actually exist in nature (yes, I had to chew it just to see what it tasted like).

While I was hesitant about taking it at first, I took some yesterday, last night and today, and I find it actually helps substantially. I almost feel 100% while taking it (there’s still a slight twinge of something there once in a while, but it comes and goes).

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This may not seem like a momentous occasion to anyone else, but I’ve only had about 3 cups of regular-strength coffee in 3 years. Yes, that’s right, about 1 cup of coffee a year.

But today my friend made some coffee (which was really tasty by the way), and I thought I would try to just suck it up and drink some. And guess what? My brain didn’t explode.

I was always very worried about the caffeine inciting worse dizziness, but I think I really need to force myself to get back to normal in many ways. Drinking a coffee once in a while might actually not be such a bad thing. Next time you have a cup of coffee, appreciate it — it’s not so easy for everyone to drink!