Since i started my VRT excercises just over weeks ago,i have noticed as soon as i open my eyes in the morning i feeel very sick!!

I have to get up straight away as soon as i wake as trying to lay back down to sleep for abit longer is near on impossible,i feel very woozy and have what i call the lilo effect,(where im on one in the see),swaying of the whole body.Sometimes the sickness will last a few hours then ease off,but other times it lasts all day.

Im not really feeling any effects of the VRT,no improvement at all but it has only been 2weeks,but is this sickness feeling to do with the VRT? I used to get it slightly before but not as much as now.

Looking forward to you views!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

nikki.xx

P.S. Noticed a few spelling mistakes sorry its early!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Nikki

Glad to see your post as a similar thing is happening to me as well! I have just finished my second week of a VRT program and find that when I wake up during the night, I often feel quite "odd", almost like I'm going to spin but I don't, especially if I roll onto my back (I sleep on my left side, BPPV in right ear). In fact I wake up quite a few times during the night (although that's been happening since all this started, so it's nothing new), although I have usually been able to get back to sleep. When I wake up (and it's time to get up!), if I try lying on my back for any length of time, I start to feel "yucky" and, like you, usually have to get up straight away, if I stay lying in bed I just feel worse with the woozy, "heady" feeling. I wonder whether it's because we are stimulating our balance systems so much with the VRT during the day, (especially for me as I lie in the one position to sleep) that we feel a bit "off" after all that time lying down at night. I find the queasy/yucky feeling will sometimes go away quickly too, but other times it lasts for hours. I also used to get this feeling before but it does seem worse since starting the VRT. Maybe it's because for the past few years I've been tending to avoid doing ANYTHING that will make me (even more) dizzy/offbalance/etc and now my vestibular system is having to get used to the regular provocation caused by the VRT (which is the whole point of it, I guess!)

I'm finding there are times when my head feels a bit clearer, so I hope the VRT is working! But there are a lot of other times, especially towards the end of the day that I feel dreadful. It's very up and down at the moment, and I guess having a lot of disturbed nights, the lack of sleep certainly doesn't help as I always feel dizzier when I'm tired and/or stressed. So how much VRT do you do? I find my sessions take about 1 1/2 to 2 hours a day in total. I have 3 vestibular exercises that I have to do 2 sessions of (morning and night) which take about half an hour each time, plus one visual exercise which takes 4 minutes each time and that has to be done 4-8 times a day, and also one or two sets of Brandt-Daroff exercises (which take 10 minutes each). It certainly does take up a lot of time and although I don't feel too bad after the exercises, once I get to work or go out during the day, that's when I feel worse, and by the end of the day I just want to get home and lie down! But I can't, because I've got more VRT to do. As I said, sometimes my head feels a bit clearer, so I'm sticking religiously with the exercises as I know it does take a long time for them to really do any good. One thing that's given me a bit of hope though - since all this started 4 years ago, I have had trouble walking down a flight of stairs (I also hate escalators and lifts/elevators, although I have to use both when getting to and from work). I always had to look straight down at where I was putting my feet when walking down stairs, if I glanced up or tried to look ahead of where I was going, I had to stop. However, in the past week or so, I've actually been able to walk down quite long flights of stairs and look ahead to the bottom of the stairs or look around a bit, although I still have to glance down at my feet occasionally. So that's a good sign, I guess, so I'd better stick with my VRT and see what comes of it!

Good luck with your VRT, I hope you start to see an improvement soon, I'll be interested to hear your progress as we seem to have started at much the same time!

Julie :bouncing: (This is me doing one of my VRT exercises!!!!!)

Hi Julie,
thanks for your reply,all i can say is WOW,you seem to be doing a hell of alot more exercises than i am! Im doing a course of Cawthorne Cooksey exercises,following my finger with just my eyes,head turns,upper body turns and bending to touch the floor,these first had to be done sitting down im now doing the same ones but standing up!I have to do them 3 times a day,and up to 20 repertitons for each time.Which take a total of 15minutes a day.I was told to sick to the same exercise in one day.Do you think i have to start of slowly and build the exercises up?I feel abit of a fraud now after hearing all the exercises you do,and im suffering on the tiny few i do!!!!! I have to go back to see my physio on the 25th of this month,do you think i should mention the amount that your doing to me? But back to the sleeping thing,i cannot lay on my back at all,dizziness much worse for me that way,i have to lay on my tummy,which kills my back sometimes.Also i have only ever been told i have vertigo,no specfic type,which i find rather strange,i have asked but have never had any response.

nikki.

This is me doing my VRT :eek: hahahahahahahahah.

Hi Nikki

Yes, it does seem like a lot of VRT I'm doing - that's why I was interested to know what you had been given, to have some sort of comparison. You would have seen my explanation in my post "Been for my first visit to the VRT guy" in which I laid out what the VRT guy had said was the cause of my recurrent BPPV and also the exercises he gave me. I guess he has given me the exercises that he feels are best for my problem and also as much as I can tolerate. I've had this problem for 4 years and I guess I may have undergone some sort of "compensation" myself, seeing as I have been lucky enough to be able to continue working (which has been horrendously difficult much of the time) and driving etc, so by having to do those things I have been exposed to a lot of visual and vestibular stimulation just through day to day activities. So maybe I would be able to do more VRT at once than someone who is in the early stages of their problem and can't tolerate a lot in the way of movement. I've also done some VRT myself on and off over the past couple of years, exercises that I have found on this site and also through other research on the web, but never a proper program or anything, so I never tended to keep it up, especially as the VRT made me feel so horrible! How long have you had your vertigo problem?

Goodness knows, I'm finding it hard enough anyway, I certainly couldn't have handled VRT like this at the onset of my problems, so don't feel bad about the exercises you're doing! Like many people here, I've tended to avoid anything that I know will set off the dizzies etc or even worse visual problems which is course makes the situation worse because you become even more sensitive to those triggers and it becomes a vicious cycle. So by doing the VRT, it's forcing me to do the very types of things I've been avoiding! My eyes have been playing up terribly these past few days, not sure whether that's due to tiredness or just my balance system trying to readjust itself.

I think that starting off slowly with the exercises and building up is probably the best way to go, trying to do too much if you're not used to it will probably just "overload" your system and make the way you feel totally unbearable (and also make you more likely to give up on the VRT!), you have to give your vestibular system a chance to learn to cope with the first lot of exercises before you move onto others or add more to the routine. As I said, I have done VRT myself in the past so maybe that has made me more "tolerant" to more vigorous exercises and longer periods of VRT. I still feel pretty terrible a lot of the time though, so we're both in the same boat!

It's a pity that you haven't been able to get some sort of diagnosis, whether it be BPPV, labs, VN or whatever. Then again, it's not surprising, see as so many people in the medical profession (specialists included) don't seem to have a clue about vertigo/dizziness/visual problems etc and can't give any sort of reason for the problem. I was "lucky" in a way that I had the classic BPPV symptoms of spinning (and the associated nystagmus) when my head was turned to the right when the ENT tested me, so he was able to give me that diagnosis - but no medico has been able to give me any explanation for the ongoing 24/7 symptoms I have in between the BPPV attacks or a reason for the recurrent BPPV until I went to see this VRT guy (who is a physio)!

Anyway, stick with the VRT - I know it makes you feel awful but now that you've started, keep it up and hopefully you'll start to see some improvement. It's very early days yet with the VRT for both of us, only two weeks into it, so we really need to give it a decent chance to work.

If you need any support or encouragement, I'm always here!

Keep me posted on how you're going, and have a good week.

Julie