There are two schools of thought on the treatment of vertigo:  medications and repositioning maneuvers.

Medications: Promethazine (anti-nausea),  Meclizine (Dramamine, an antihistamine), Diazepam (valium).  I haven’t had a lot of success with the medications. 

I have to start taking them as soon as I start to feel the vertigo coming on.  Both the Promethazine and the Diazepam reduce the nausea, but they also drug me up and make me sleep, and I can’t drive to work the next day.

Repositioning maneuvers: Semont Maneuver and the Epley Maneuver.  Both these maneuvers/execises are series of positions that the doctor or physical therapist moves you into.  When you’ve finished with the exercises, hopefully you’ll have no vertigo symptoms.  My own experience is that these exercises reduce the intensity of the vertigo (maybe most of the little particles have gone home), but that they don’t eliminate the vertigo.

My physical therapist taught me how to do the Epley Maneuver at home.  My problem is that I can never find the piece of paper where I wrote down the steps in the Epley Maneuver.  When I got my iPhone, one of my first ideas was to make an iPhone app for the Epley Maneuver.  Check out our now-available “Vertigo Help” app at the iPhone app store

Posted under Treatment