A few months ago my friend Mike had a bad case of vertigo. The day before symptoms appeared, he had been swimming and when he got out of the pool, he jerked his head repeatedly to the side several times to get some water out of his ear. It seemed pretty likely to both of us that his dizziness (which was bad enough to send him to the emergency room) must be related to that violent shaking of his head.
And it probably was. Experts now say that up to twenty percent of vertigo is caused by loose ear rocks that are shifted out of position in one’s inner ear.
The tiny rocks serve an important purpose: They stimulate nerve cells when we move our heads — and send signals to our brain that guide our sense of up and down … When the rocks fall into one of the inner ear canals, the brain gets confused. As the rocks roll around in the canal, the brain senses that the head is moving a lot more than it actually is. The result: vertigo.
The condition is known as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). And the cure? Move your head around (in a specific way called the Epley manuever) until the rocks slide back into place.
So next time someone asks if you have rocks in your head (or does that just happen to me?), you’ll know the answer.
