If you suffer from any sort of balance disorder, you’ve probably come to realize that stress plays a big part in how good (or bad) you feel. For me personally, it’s taken me quite a while to realize the intimate connection between these two forces, but once I came to recognize it, it allowed me to better control when and where I feel dizzy.

As I said in my last post, I took a great vacation, and was able to unwind for a few days. I felt tremendously better (I did have my usual daily dizziness, but it was actually much better than usual). The lack of work-related stress really seemed to have a positive impact on how I felt.

I find exercise has the same stress-relieving effect — and it usually lasts for several hours after I exercise. And alcohol, while it certainly relieves stress in the short term, actually makes me feel more stressed in the longer term.

So while alcohol may be a quick fix for stress, it has a negative cumulative effect, and can often leave you feeling more stressed later in the day or the next day. Not to mention that alcohol is usually a motivation-killer as well.

As I’ve told myself many times, I need to avoid alcohol more, eat better and exercise more regularly (good advice for anyone, balance disorder or not). But for me (and anyone else with balance issues), the effects of not doing these things are not just felt in 10 or 20 years, but instead almost immediately.

So I just came back from the vestibular rehabilitation therapist, and we went over my first exercises today. Some of them made me feel pretty dizzy and nauseous, but she says that that’s a good thing.

So I basically have 3 exercises that I have to do 3 times per day. She said we’d move on to some more challenging exercises once these become easier.

The first exercise is to stand heel-to-toe in a doorway with my eyes closed (it’s harder than it sounds, but maybe just for me). I guess this is to retrain my brain to rely more on my feet for balance than just using my vestibular system.

The second is to look at a business card from arm’s length away while shaking my head faster and faster. This one made me particularly dizzy — but again, that’s supposedly a good sign for the potential for improvement.

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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?

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 don’t ever remember being able to sleep well. Even when I was a little kid, I had trouble sleeping, and would often wake up in the night, unable to fall back to sleep. But lately, my sleeplessness has reached a whole new level.

I’m not sure what’s causing the sleeplessness, but it usually goes something like this. I lie in bed, almost asleep — until I get a strong sensation of movement that startles me completely out of my state of almost-sleep.

It’s strong enough that I actually lie in bed, muscles tensed, wondering if I did actually move — even though I know that I really didn’t. This is coupled with a second feeling, where I am actually sleeping, and then wake up because I’ve rolled over — and then get the sensation that I just keep going.

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