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This past winter I had my first, and hopefully last, experience with vertigo. The first time it happened I was out on a walk with my husband. I got dizzy and things seemed to start spinning for no reason. I had to stand still for a few minutes until it passed and then we walked home. After that I noticed that I would feel lightheaded at times, but it usually passed pretty quickly. Then one morning I was in bed reading a book and the whole room started spinning around me. I felt like I was on an amusement park ride, but the reality was that I was in bed, physically motionless. After a while the spinning stopped, but it would return every time I moved my head. I also had a headache, became very nauseous and had extremely cold feet.

I ended up up seeing a doctor who prescribed an anti-nausea medication and physical therapy. Luckily I had some clues as to what had brought on the vertigo, plus a stockpile of alternative health books at home, so I recovered with only some minor diet changes, stretching exercises and yoga postures. As of this writing my vertigo has completely cleared up.

Listed below are the treatments I found helpful for the symptoms of vertigo, nausea and cold feet (The cold feet are technically known as Raynaud's syndrome).

1. Eating more more magnesium rich foods helped. Many health and nutrition books note that vertigo can be a symptom of a magnesium deficiency. I believe this was likely to have been my problem, too. Prior to my vertigo onset my family had all been sick with the flu. I had been busy taking care of them and wasn't eating as healthy as I normally did or exercising very much. I was also eating a lot of yogurt to load on on beneficial bacteria, a food I normally don't eat that often, so I wouldn't get sick like the rest of my family. As a dairy product, yogurt is very high in calcium, a magnesium antagonist.

Other symptoms of magnesium deficiency may be anxiety, heart palpitations, heart arrhythmias, mtiral valve prolapse, migraines, sensitive hearing and tight muscles, and fibromyalgia (See my page on magnesium for a more extensive list of symptoms.)

Foods high in magnesium generally include nuts, seeds, beans and leafy green vegetables.

2. Eating more alkaline forming foods was also important. I think my nausea was caused by an over acid stomach, which can also be linked to magnesium deficiencies. Magnesium is very alkaline, and is one of the minerals the body releases to keep its acid-alkaline balance in check. Researchers from Germany have found that an acid load in the body may be a factor in human magnesium deficiencies.

When I got home from seeing the doctor for my vertigo and nausea, my husband made me some chicken broth. Drinking this made me even worse and I vomited it up. I then tested my pH levels and found that my body was extremely acidic.

Chicken broth is very acidic so it made me think to try to eat something very alkaline next instead. Next I drank a banana smoothie with coconut milk, an easily absorbable and highly alkaline food. After I had the smoothie my nausea started going away. Next I had a baked potato and then, not only was I no longer suffering from nausea, but interestingly my feet also warmed up.

I think my feet were cold along with the vertigo because a lack of magnesium had been constricting my blood vessels and slowing down my circulation. While I had the vertigo episodes and for a few days before the onset, my feet had been really cold. I could pile ten blankets on them and it didn't help to warm them up at all. But drinking the banana smoothie and eating the potato made my feet become warm.

3. I did yoga and other stretching exercises to relax the muscles in and around my head, ears and neck. I think this relieved pressure on my ears and also helped to stop the vertigo. I suspect that not having enough magnesium in my diet, being on the computer too much, and not exercising had made the muscles in my upper body tight and stiff. Magnesium is the mineral that aids the body in relaxing muscles, while calcium contracts muscles. In hindsight, eating a lot of yogurt, which is high in calcium, the muscles in my body became too tight and contracted.

For a few days prior to the vertigo onset I had headaches from muscular tension and I also felt a return of my thoracic outlet syndrome (numbness in my left arm and hand, headaches and shoulder pain on my right side, and a tingling feeling down my left arm).

When I did yoga and exercises I had been previously been given by a physical therapist for the thoracic outlet syndrome, then I started having less and less vertigo episodes until they completely stopped after a week or so. By the time the physical therapy department called me to schedule an appointment for therapy, my vertigo had already cleared up from my home treatments.

It has been a year since my first vertigo attack, and occasionally I will still get bouts of nausea, dizziness and vertigo, usually from eating too much yogurt. When that happens now I know I eat or drink something alkaline (blackberry Izzy sodas work great) and so far that has always helped me get back to normal.

Visit my connective tissue disorder home page to use my search feature and see information on conditions related to vertigo.

These sections may be also of special interest:

Alternative treatments for tinnitus - ringing in the ears often occurs along with temporomandibular joint syndrome.

Thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS) - causes and treatments.

Creaky Knees, Cracking Necks and Popping Jaws - tips to prevent snap, crackle, pop, crunch and other assorted sounds from your joints.

Plugged Ears

TMJ: Exercise and Diet Treatment Tips - covers the many factors that played a role on my TMJ recovery.

TMJ Exercise and Tips

Low levels of magnesium can cause tight muscles around the jaw and everywhere else in the body.

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