February 20, 2020 - EyeClarity Blog
HOW TO GET RID OF VERTIGO
When working with vertigo, the first thing I like to assess is people’s relationship to gravity and their sense of belonging on the earth. There are three major things to consider when understanding our sense of gravity:
- Our inner ears (vestibular system) – In the vestibular system, we have tiny bones that are like stones. This system essentially acts as our GPS system and balance mechanism.
- Our eyes – Most of us nowadays overfocus with our eyes. We are tunneling our vision and excluding our peripheral vision. This is due, in part, to increased digital device use and our lifestyles causing us to become more myopic. Unfortunately, when we tunnel our vision, we suppress our vestibular function. One of the ways to expand our vestibular system is to expand into our peripheral vision. The more peripheral vision we engage, the more we engage our vestibular system.
- Our feet – It is very important that we sense and feel the bottoms of our feet when we are walking. I have noticed that more and more, people are unaware of their feet while they are moving. There are small things that you can do to bring awareness to this area and increase your connection. Putting lavender oil or Mexican lime oil on your feet and massaging them on a daily basis can wake up the bottom of the feet and encourage a stronger connection from your feet to your visual and vestibular systems.
These three systems make up the Perceptual Triangle, and having a balanced relationship between all three is a simple way to reduce vertigo.
Visual coordination is another skill that we need to avoid vertigo. For example, if you’ve suffered from head trauma, a lot of times one of your eyes will start wondering out or in, which can cause a vertical split in your eyes leading to double vision. Not being able to use both of your eyes together – convergence insufficiency – affects roughly 5% of the U.S. population. Also related to trauma, is a midline shift in your vision. If you think of your eyes as the middle of your face, when you’ve had some kind of trauma, the middle of your vision can shift right or left. If this happens, it creates an imbalance in your natural GPS system making it difficult for your eyes to be able to steer your body through space. Vertigo can also be affected by something called visual neglect. This can occur if you’ve had a stroke or lost part of your peripheral vision. This imbalance in your peripheral vision can affect your GPS system and balance as well.
In conclusion, it is important to think about the three components of vertigo and balancing – 1) the vestibular system and inner ear 2) feeling your feet and 3) slow down your vision and dilating into your peripheral vision to relax your nervous system. These are some of the most basic ways to begin to neutralize vertigo. You can work on all of these through eye exercises and over time they can help address the underlying causes of vertigo. Other things include altering your diet to include more antioxidants, nuts, see, and nutrients like phosphorus, magnesium, selenium, and chromium while reducing your intake of salt, caffeine, alcohol, and processed foods.