vestibular neuritis & vestibular migraines: two important things that helped me take back my life

Vestibular conditions have the ability to make us feel entirely powerless; therefore, this space is meant to do the exact opposite. I want to empower you to create your wellness and give you the resources to thrive. I've gone from sinking in constant overwhelming symptoms to being symptom-free. A whole lot of healing happened in between.

I'm so grateful to be in my grounded state. Gratitude does not even express how I feel about the fact that I’ve come through my vestibular something.

There was a time that I didn’t talk about my vestibular something, and now I can’t shut up about it. I wrote Uncovering Bliss: A Journey with a Vestibular Condition & Beyond to provide love and light to other Vestibular Warriors. It's an honest account of what it felt like to be in the midst of a vestibular condition. I want others to know they are not alone in the storm.

I thought it would be helpful to share a few things that have helped me most in the storm. In particular, I want to share things that I had power over. Of course this is such a personal journey so what helps me might not be the ticket for you, but I think that these things can provide a Vestibular Warrior the opportunity to feel better, while elevating wellness.

These days my objective is to fuel my health; however, at one point when I was in the darkness of 24/7 symptoms with vestibular migraines, my goal was to get through the day with as few bumps as possible. The first year I could not make sense of the vestibular neuritis symptoms vs. vestibular migraine attacks. It was all soul-crushing chaos. I was in my version of survival mode at that time. When I was at my beginning, all I wanted was to hear stories of people breaking through the vestibular symptom chaos. It's still something that fills my heart up and I know that I have to put my wellness as a top priority in my life.

​And now let's jump into the goodness! Note that the things I discuss are still a large part of my wellness routine.

RETRAINING MY BODY

The physical therapist I saw in the first few months after it hit was the first person to say the words "vestibular neuritis" to me. She actually mentioned labyrinthitis first and I put the pieces together that I most likely had vestibular neuritis (which involves no hearing changes). In the early weeks upon Googling my symptoms I landed on a number of YouTube videos of people performing exercises to basically retrain their bodies after a vestibular condition hit. Similar exercises were given to me from my physical therapist. Although I could act normal on the outside, inside I felt insanely off kilter, unbalanced, disconnected from my body and as if I was floating… always floating.

Looking back I can very clearly see that the fact that I pushed through my normal life from the beginning (minus the first week) helped me tremendously. It saved me on many levels. Going through life became my own personal version of retraining. In my case it was super intense going through the motions of my life (going to work, grocery shopping, going out in the world, keeping up with my baby and toddler).

​It felt awful. I need a new word for awful because it felt impossible every moment for months and months until it started to get easier. Without knowing it, I was helping my body learn to move again in the world and find a balanced state. I think many do this with vestibular therapy and that's why I mention it. My real life of version of vestibular therapy every moment of every day was my ticket to finding my balance once again; although, at that time I was in pure survival mode.

nourishing diet

If you have a diagnosis, that's awesome. Congrats. If you don't, I'm sending love and light your way and I know how that goes. I self-diagnosed myself long before a doctor slapped a label on my vestibular condition (21 months in by the way). The first neurologist that I saw offered me no answers. The internet was more helpful, but that only increased my panic. As time went on, I cared less about the fact that I didn't have a diagnosis and more about healing. I just wanted to find myself in the storm of my vestibular something.

Because I didn't have a diagnosis, my goal from the start was just to help my body heal and find its natural grounded state. One of the first things I looked at was how I was eating.  Our food choices have the power to make huge shifts in our bodies and our world.  Eliminating the junk and embracing a wholesome plant-forward diet gives the body the opportunity to free itself of a toxic weight, both emotionally and physically, and, as a result, it can support itself in healing and flourishing.

My body (and yours, by the way) is meant to find its blissful balance, but environmental factors, stress, toxins, and lifestyle can throw things out of whack.  We lose our balance.

The quickest way to change how you feel about yourself is to look at how you're feeding your mind and body.  What we eat matters.  It cannot be ignored, and it especially shouldn’t be when dealing with a chronic health condition.  I’ve been embracing a plant-based diet the last decade, but my vestibular something encouraged me to clean it up (ditch refined sugar, vegetables oils and ultra processed foods and turn primarily to whole foods). I also went back to school for holistic nutrition.  I wanted to know more about the science of fueling my body and the impact it had on health.  In years past, I dabbled in Macrobiotics and ran a wellness blog in my mid-twenties, so learning about nourishing the body for health has been a passion of mine for a long while.    

I share these things because they were within my control and that alone gave me some relief. I had the power to make strides in my wellness. There are absolutely other things that helped along the way (neuroplasticity, craniosacral + chiropractic work, nutrition response testing + morphogenic field technique, foam rolling), but my life vestibular therapy and nourishing diet were an important step in my healing.