The Menieres journey often starts with an unexplained vertigo attack which may have been proceeded by many of the other symptoms including fluctuating hearing loss, dizziness, tinnitus, fatigue, ear fullness and head fog,
The success of your first trip to your Doctor will very much depend upon how much experience they have had of Menieres and their ability to recognise it as a likely cause. Ideally the Doctor will identify it and refer you to an ENT Consultant so you can get specialist help.
Your experience at the ENT Consultant will also be very variable depending upon their experience of Menieres and the clarity of your own particular set of symptoms.
As a minimum your ENT Consultant should test you to discount any other potential identifiable vestibular issues. You should get a hearing test which will likely show low frequency hearing loss in the effected ear. You will also get an MRI scan which will likely be negative. If you are experiencing regular vertigo, low frequency hearing loss and no accountable alternative vestibular diagnosis, then this should be a fairly straight forward Menieres diagnosis. If not then it will be less clear cut and it is quite common to take months or years to get a clear diagnosis.
In some ways getting a diagnosis gives people re-assurance but the general response from your medical practitioner will be that there is no cure but there are ways of managing it. Even without a diagnosis you still have the symptoms so you need to still try and deal with them.
At Deaf to Menieres we try to focus on natural solutions which can work alongside and be totally compatible with anything your ENT Consultant or Doctor would like to do.
Outside of the United States the first standard treatment you should receive from your ENT Consultant is an initial dosage of Serc (Betahistine Dihxdrochloride) which should be a minimum 0f 16 mg x 3 times per day. Many people have had success just taking this but it does not work for all people.
ENT Consultants are also becoming more familiar with successful studies showing that if Serc does not work on the minimum dosage then it is often successful with much higher doses which can go up to 480 mg per day in some cases.
You can see our full description of Serc (Betahistine) on our website page here
Aside from Serc we would recommend you search for the potential root causes of your symptoms which can be straightforward or be many and varied.
It is our belief that Menieres is a chronic illness and in fact many sufferers have been diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses along with Menieres e.g. ME/CFS, Lyme, Fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s, Lupus, MS etc.
The real difficulty with Menieres disease is that everyone is different and it can be quite often a long painstaking process to track down what the root cause can be.
A fact finding exercise with our members resulted in 17 potential root causes that could be investigated.
Our list of potential root causes is listed in most likely order so it is a good approach to work down it in sequence and see if anything tried can relieve your symptoms.
By far the biggest factor and most likely benefit would be to address your diet first.
You can see our Diet tab on the menu on the website for detailed guidelines of how to approach this.
Alongside this you could also look at other big ticket items for example stress, allergies, virus which can all be addressed simultaneously. All of this is covered in our Treatment tab on the menu on the website.
If you are new to Menieres and suspect you have it or have recently been diagnosed I hope the above has been helpful and you can find some useful information on our website to help you towards successful management of your symptoms.
We are a patient led global charity registered in the UK dedicated to helping you find your ROOT CAUSE and find TREATMENTS THAT WORK.
The Root Cause guide has been built up from patient feedback supplied by our members.