Vertigo is a feeling of being dizzy, nauseous, & imbalanced. Vertigo is the leading cause of dizziness and disorientation among adults.
It is of various types, each having different symptoms and course of vertigo treatment.
Your vertigo treatment highly depends on the exact type of vertigo you’re experiencing.
There are two types of vertigo: Central Vertigo, and Peripheral Vertigo.
Central Vertigo refers to a problem with the brain and the parts of it that control the body’s balance. Most often, it is caused by a problem with the central nervous system or the spinal cord.
Peripheral vertigo can be attributed to an inner ear issue, an ear infection, a head injury, or some other unknown cause.
It’s also important to remember that vertigo is not a disease in itself, rather a symptom of some underlying disorder.
It’s important to find out the exact cause of your vertigo in order to treat it effectively.
Types of Vertigo
There are two types of vertigo; central & peripheral. Central vertigo arises due to an issue with how the brain processes sensory information related to maintaining balance.
Peripheral vertigo is caused by an issue with the inner ear. The inner ear helps maintain the body’s balance & hearing through a delicate network of structures called the labyrinth, the vestibular nerve, & the auditory nerve.
When even a single one of these structures has a problem, the patient feels dizzy, out of sorts, & unbalanced.
Some of the most common causes of Peripheral Vertigo are:
Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo(BPPV): BPPV is caused by tiny calcium crystals in the middle ear breaking loose & depositing inside the semicircular canal of the inner ear. There, they cause problems with the way the inner ear maintains balance & sends signals to the brain. This makes a patient feel dizzy, disoriented, nauseous, & as if their surroundings are moving.
Vestibular Neuronitis, also known as Vestibular Neuritis: It is an infection of the vestibular nerve that leads to the nerve becoming swollen & inflamed. This causes hindrance in the transmission of balance signals from the brain to the inner ear & vice-versa through the concerned nerve. A lot of infections, including the cold, flu, measles, mumps, chickenpox, rubella, & more can cause Vestibular Neuritis.
Meniere’s Disease is another inner ear disorder that is caused by an excessive amount of fluid inside the ears. Meniere’s Disease leads patients to feel dizzy, nauseous, & other vertigo-like symptoms. It can also cause hearing loss, tinnitus, & a feeling of pressure inside the ears.
Other conditions that can cause Peripheral Vertigo to include:
Labyrinthitis: It is an inner ear infection caused by viruses or bacteria & tends to cause swelling in the labyrinth. It leads to people feeling dizzy, nauseous, & disoriented. Other vertigo-like symptoms are also common.
Perilymph Fistula: It is caused by an ‘opening’ or a break in one of the window membranes between the middle ear and the inner ear. It causes people to feel extra pressure inside their ears & vertigo-like symptoms.
Superior semicircular canal dehiscence syndrome(SSCDD): It is caused by a bony part of your semicircular canal, that carries fluid inside your ear, breaking down and leaking fluid from one part of the ear into another.
Head injuries, neck injuries, ear surgery, & any other issues too, can cause peripheral vertigo in some people.
Peripheral Vertigo treatment:
Most cases of Peripheral Vertigo are treated by addressing the exact underlying issue.
For BPPV:
Exercises like the Epley Maneuver, the Brandr-Daroff exercises, & the Semont maneuver help in vertigo treatment.
Anti-dizziness and anti-nausea medications also help.
Antihistamines
Anti-anxiety pills and antidepressants may also be recommended
Antibiotics & anti-viral medications may be given when vertigo is caused by an infection
Water pills, also known as diuretics, are given to patients with Meniere’s Disease.
Vestibular Rehabilitation Therapy is recommended for patients with long-term, chronic vertigo.
Home remedies like taking Ginkgo Biloba, vitamin supplements, & getting a good night’s sleep are also recommended.
In some cases, surgery might be needed to fix any issues that aren’t responding to medication and exercises.
Peripheral Vertigo prognosis:
In most cases, peripheral vertigo is easily treatable & often goes away on its own without any medical intervention. In other cases, it can become chronic and recurring in nature, especially if the root of the problem is not addressed.
Central Vertigo:
Central Vertigo causes sudden, abrupt onset of vertigo symptoms. It also tends to last for a longer time period than peripheral vertigo, & is usually more severe than the former.
It’s common for patients to be unable to stand or walk properly during one of central vertigo attacks.
Uncontrollable nystagmus is also a key feature of central vertigo. It is severe and more random as compared to peripheral vertigo & doesn’t go away when you’re asked to fix your attention on a single object.
Hearing issues & tinnitus are rather uncommon with central vertigo. However, headaches, swallowing problems, general fatigue, and weakness are common signs of central vertigo.
Central Vertigo causes:
A spinal cord or brain injury is often what causes central vertigo in most people. Other conditions can also be the culprit at times. These include:
Any head injuries
Illnesses or infections
Multiple sclerosis
Migraines
Any kind of brain tumors
Strokes
Transient ischemic attacks(TIA), also known as mini-stroke. These are strokes that last for a short time and don’t usually cause any long-lasting damage to the vital organs.
Finding and treating the exact underlying cause of central vertigo is the best treatment for it.
For example, if Multiple Sclerosis is causing the central vertigo symptoms, then medications and therapies to manage it might help control central vertigo attacks too.
Similarly, for migraine induced central vertigo, migraine medicines and stress reduction activities might prove helpful.
The same goes for Brain Tumors, head injuries, spinal cord injuries, & other brain problems.
The adequate treatment of any underlying issues is the only way to treat & manage central vertigo in patients.
Additionally, you should always be on the lookout for signs and symptoms that may be a reason to visit the ER.
These include:
Slurred speech or bizarre movements
Fainting or losing consciousness
Vomiting profusely
inability to hold down food or liquids
Difficulty breathing
Confusion or lack of oxygen
If any of these symptoms appear with the vertigo-like symptoms of both types of vertigo, you should visit the emergency room immediately.
These could signify a larger problem than Vertigo.
You could also try performing some exercises to help get relief from your vertigo symptoms. However, before beginning any of the exercises, it’s best to consult with your doctor first. It is important to not make your condition worse than ever.
Hearing loss creates a lot of problems in a person’s personal & professional life, & causes issues with their emotional well-being.
The causes of hearing loss can be diverse and not particularly related to any specific reason.
Certain diseases, illnesses, infections, medications, & accidents can lead to hearing loss, as can certain structural & genetic disorders.
Whatever the cause of hearing loss, hearing aids can help treat your hearing loss.
They can very easily help you hear properly & interact with other people more meaningfully.
However, it’s important to choose the right hearing aids for this purpose.
How do hearing aids work?
A hearing aid is basically a battery-powered electronic device that helps you hear external sounds more accurately.
They are quite tiny so they can easily be worn around or behind your ears, & they help make external sounds louder to help you easily hear those.
With the help of hearing aids, you can amplify external sounds which helps you communicate with the other people around you in a better way.
There are three components of a hearing aid. These are:
A microphone, that picks up external sounds
An amplifier that makes those sounds louder
A receiver that sends these amplified sounds into your ear.
However, hearing aids don’t benefit everyone who wears them. Hearing Aids often benefit those people who have damages to their inner ear and/or the nerve that links the ear with the brain.
The damage can be due to:
Disease
Aging
Loud noises
Medications
Hearing loss that occurs due to issues with the eardrum, ear canal, or middle ear, is called conductive hearing loss.
In most cases, surgery or any other medical intervention might help relieve the hearing loss of patients.
But these options are often not for everyone.
Typical Hearing Aids only work for you if you have an open ear canal & a relatively normal exterior ear canal.
Instead, a device that sends sounds to the inner ear through their skull bone, might be the best option for them.
How you can get a hearing aid?
An Ears-Nose-Throat(ENT) doctor can help you with the proper hearing aids for yourself.
These specialists can easily evaluate & help treat your hearing loss.
The ENT specialist will conduct exams to help you find out the best hearing aids for your case.
In addition to that, an audiologist will perform certain tests on you to figure out the exact type of hearing loss you’re suffering from.
You should always get hearing aids from a specialist, only after performing all the tests and due diligence.
Avoid mail-ordering hearing aids as they often don’t fit correctly, & don’t improve your hearing issues much.
Most people don’t experience hearing loss in both ears, however, some people do.
For people with hearing loss in both ears, it’s probably best to wear two hearing aids.
Types & Styles of hearing loss:
An audiologist can help you find the right kind of hearing aids for yourself. They will figure out the best kind of hearing aids for you depending on your exact degree of hearing loss, & also modify it according to any special needs you might have.
The factors that determine what kind of hearing aids is best for you:
The type of hearing loss you suffer from & its severity
Your age
Your experience & efficiency with small devices
Your lifestyle
The cost. Hearing aids costs can vary greatly in price, often ranging from hundreds to thousands of dollars
Hearing Aids are primarily of two types. These include:
Analog hearing aids: These convert sound waves to electrical signals that help make the sounds louder. They’re generally less expensive than the other kind of hearing aids. They are also easier to handle as they have easier volume controls.
Digital hearing aids: These hearing aids convert sound waves into numerical codes much like computer codes, which then amplifies them.
The codes include information about the direction of a sound, its pitch, & its volume.
This helps the patient easily control & modulate the sound volume, frequency, & intensity according to their physical conditions & surroundings, i.e., whether they are in a quiet room, setting, or someplace noisy & loud. Most digital hearing aids are able to adjust such tiny details & nuances automatically, without any manual adjustments.
The automatic kind, however, costs significantly more than the manual digital hearing aids, but have shown better results & are also smaller in size, thus easier to handle. They are also more powerful than manual digital hearing aids.
Style of hearing aids:
There are three main styles of hearing aids. They differ in their size, placement in or over the ear, along with how much they help the patient hear external sounds.
These styles include:
Canal hearing aids: Canal hearing aids fit inside your ears which makes them harder to see. An In-the-canal(ITC) hearing aids are made to fit a specific canal of your ear. A completely-in-canal(CIC) hearing aid is smaller & nearly disappears inside the ear canal. Both types are used to treat moderate to severe hearing loss, however, since they are both extremely small, they can be difficult to adjust & remove.
Owing to this reason, these usually aren’t used for small children & older people who might have difficulty adjusting to them.
These devices are quite difficult to see, hence you might want to wear them every day, or even use them for several months at a stretch.
In-The-Ear(ITE) hearing aids: ITE hearing aids fit completely inside your ear. They come in a hard plastic case that holds the electronics parts.
They are used for people with mild to severe hearing loss, although they are not suitable for children whose ears are still growing in size.
Behind-The-Ear(BTE) hearing aids: BTE hearing aids sit encased in a hard plastic case behind your ears. A plastic ear molds fits inside the outer ear & directs sounds to the ear.
A different type, which is called Mini BTE, fits entirely behind your ear with a narrow tube that goes into your ear canal.
This tube helps prevent earwax from building up inside the ear, as well as helps make your own voice sound clearer.
BTEs can help treat mild to severe hearing loss, however, they aren’t for everyone.Receiver-In-Canal(RIC) & Receiver-In-the-ear(RIE) hearing aids: Both of these hearing aids have a behind-the-ear component that connects to the receiver in the ear or the ear canal with a tiny wire. This helps low-frequency sounds to enter the ear in a natural way & also helps the high-frequency sounds to be amplified through the hearing aid. RIC & RIE hearing aids help patients with mild to severe hearing loss.
You can also modify any of these devices according to your specific needs & requirements. Your doctor will help you define those needs & requirements, based on which they will specify the exact hearing aid for you. Book an Appointment: https://vertigoandearclinic.com/contact-us.php
Speech disorders include articulation disorders in which there are difficulties producing sounds in syllables or saying words incorrectly to the point that listeners can't understand what's being said.
Fluency disorders are problems such as stuttering, in which the flow of speech is broken up by abnormal stoppages, partial-word repetitions or prolonging sounds and syllables.
In resonance or voice disorders there are grave problems with the pitch, volume, or quality of the voice that divert listeners from what's being said. These types of disorders may also cause pain or discomfort for a child when speaking.
Language disorders can be of two types; either receptive or expressive. In receptive disorders, there are serious difficulties in understanding or processing language. While on the other hand, in expressive disorders the major difficulty is putting words together, limited vocabulary, or inability to use language in a socially appropriate way. Other than that, in cognitive-communication disorders, there is difficulty with communication skills that involve memory, attention, perception, organization, regulation, and problem-solving. While Dysphagia or oral feeding disorders are disorders in the way someone eats or drinks, including problems with chewing, swallowing, coughing, gagging, and refusing foods.
Vertigo and Ear Clinic is a speech therapy clinic in Jaipur that offers interventions and exercises for resolving speech disorders. With the guidance and competent supervision of best ENT doctors and speech therapists in Jaipur, we provide clear solutions to speech disorders.
