is it true that the inner ear infection goes away and what your left with is the anxiety and low seritonin in your body which keeps the symptoms going? my neuro told me that at this point after 6 months that whats left now is probably anxiety and everything that is keeping it here. they said that anxiety is the number one thing that hinders recovery and thats why they prescribe klonopin or xanax with it.

so now im being treated for anixety and into my 3rd week of Paxil cr. im feeling better but not really anything yet. m playing a gig with my band for the 1st time in 6 months on saturday so i hope that goes good. i practiced today with them with no problems at all. now i just feel alittle woozy typing.

i know that with me....im worrying about having somehting the docs overlooked or something that will never end. i want my life back!

anyways....just wondering if that stuff was true or if thats what you guys have heard.

Hey C&R,

>>>is it true that the inner ear infection goes away and what your left with is the anxiety and low seritonin in your body which keeps the symptoms going?

I think this is partially true. It's not the whole story though. Your brain still has to complete the job of compensating as best it can for a new pattern of signalling coming from the damaged inner ear/nerves. After the injury, the balance "manual" locked into your brain since childhood no longer reflects what's going on. It's like the rules of the game have changed and the brain is sitting there going, huh? All of the evidence out there suggests very strongly that 1) anxiety prevents compensation 2) that anxiety occurs as a result of inner ear dysfunction. Thus, you can wind up in an endless viscious circle. Whether it's the anxiety per se that is causing a serotonin drop or another mechanism, I'm not certain. But from my own experience I think the feelings of anxiety and depressive heaviness that comes with this occurs via other pathways as well. I have gone from feeling near normal for weeks to suddenly dropping to a massive low rapidly only to bounce back 24 hours later. These episodes have happened without anxiety happening first.

>>>they said that anxiety is the number one thing that hinders recovery and thats why they prescribe klonopin or xanax with it.

Yup, benzos do work well for this (relieving the physical symptoms of anxiety). I've seen this in myself time and again. I find a benzo works best for me when the anxiety that is happening is strictly coming from the physiological symptoms. I can have this buzzing going on throughout my body even though mentally I feel fine. In this case valium kills it. But if it's me stressing, than it doesn't work so well. Fortunately that's rare. Whether a low-dose benzo can aid compensation is an interesting question. Too much of it apparently hinders it but if a small dose kills anxiety, then perhaps it aids compensation. Guess there's a fine line between how much is good versus how much is bad.

>>>im feeling better but not really anything yet

Don't judge the meds yet. It will take a good 6 weeks to see what the effect is. I'm confident that if you can stay mentally calm and not worry about your condition (ie, accept where you are) that you will see vast improvements soon.

>>>im worrying about having somehting the docs overlooked or something that will never end

Get those thoughts out of your head. It's just not true and will only serve to wind you up further. One of the worst enemies in all of this is our own minds creating all kinds of stories and possibilities. Don't let yourself be tricked in this way. Everything you have described on this board so far sounds like textbook inner ear hassles and nothing more.

Hang in there...Scott :cool:

im on .5mg of xanax when needed and was told that since its a low dose that i can take it and it won't hinder anything. is that part true?? sorry for all the questions.

hope all is well!

its hard not to think that i have something else going on cause the doctors have told me after running all the tests that i had an inner ear infection and that it will go away with time and some vrt. its been almost 7 months and im still feeling not myself. i do feel better than say 3 months ago.....i can do things i wasn't able to do before. buti still feel whoosy in my head and lightheaded and tired almost always.

xanax is basicllay the only thing that makes me feel almost normal again.

can an inner ear infection really last this long? and do people go back to their normal lives after???

I'm just arriving from a neuroto visit, because I felt like hell yesterday, almost all day with spaced out feeling, lots of object movement(like oscillopsia, but no I know it's more often called visual vertigo), dizziness, ear pressure, the works.

They checked me out again for dix-hallpike, and Romberg test(both negative), and almost it all, and now with something they didn't use the last time, wich was something they plug into your ear, wich has a light on it and it emits this hum type noise, not exactly know the name of it... but this showed that due to my allergic history, I've got both ears inflammated, since I'm already developing some sinus-throat stuff right now, wich obviously affects the ear function and my compensation process.

She also explained that it's hard to know what exactly affected my ear in the first place, it could be a virus, or a bacteria, due to my allergic stuff, but now it's all gone, what's left, as in most cases here, is what she called a vestibular dysfunction, meaning somehting is wrong in there, and you'll have to compensate for it.

Obviously my perennial sinus condition helped it in the bad way, that is also true for my whiplash accident, and for a mild TMJ stuff, she detected today, add it all up to my recent food poisoning, and thinkin' about it I'm doing pretty well, considering.

An also my lack of commitment and discipline last year wtih my VRT, helped to slow down the overall recovery process, so it continues, and in the meantime, any stimuli which involves any part of the whole balance system, an infection, bright lights, motion, etc. could make me feel dizzy in a whole different ways, until my brain learns to compensate again for all this stuff, and hopefully that day I(we) won´t feel bad at all.

Obviously I have to treat my allergic stuff, to help both my general health condition and my compensation process, this same is true for an anxiety case, each which in their own way, hinder compensation.

So mixing it all it is clear how we can be experiencing so many different sensations wich appear to us like a new disease, or a bad Dx, when it is all, unfortunately for us, quite normal for this junk(as it is perfectly described by subs). An this sometimes shows up like a Meniere's case, because of the changing sensations, and the apparent "evolution" of the disease, wich really is nothing more than the compensation-decompensation merry-go round. And as we all know MS is quite uncommon and it has a clear hearing loss component attached to it, but for many unexperiences PHD's or ENT's sometimes this is the first choice of diagnose.

She also gave to me a new VOR stimulating excercise, to mix it with my cooksey exercises(we were right here subs), and se expects me to be fine, in some time, how long? that is unfortunately another mystery, but she doesn't think this last forever.

One last thing specially for you C&R, she told me that the caloric test shows this dysfucntion clearly in the eye movement charts from the test, and most of the time the ear wich do not respond well(ie you don't get dizzy at all), it the faulty one, BUT in some cases the bad ear responds different, getting you dizzier than normal. Anyway the real diagnose comes from both the difference in response between both ears, and in the chart, which clearly shows how good or bad your eyes move due to the caloric stimuli.