HealthInfo Canterbury
Treating vertigo
Te whakarauora i te kehu
The treatment for your vertigo depends on the cause and severity of your symptoms.
- During a vertigo attack, lying still in a quiet, darkened room may help you feel less nauseous (sick) and reduce your feeling of spinning.
- Try to avoid stressful situations, as anxiety can make your vertigo symptoms worse. Read about how to deal with stress and anxiety.
- If you have vertigo and vomiting, your doctor may prescribe motion sickness medication such as prochlorperazine or hyoscine hydrobromide (scopolamine).
- For vertigo caused by Ménière's disease, your doctor may prescribe betahistine.
- Depending on what is causing your vertigo, your doctor may also recommend some special exercises.
Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV)
This type of vertigo is usually caused by small calcium crystals in your inner ear. It happens when you suddenly change the position of your head – when you tip your head up or down, lie down or turn over or sit up in bed. It can increase your risk of falls. The vertigo tends to last for a minute or less and goes away if you keep your head still.
BPPV often clears up without treatment after several weeks or months.
To help ease the symptoms, try simple things like:
- getting out of bed slowly
- avoiding activities where you have to look up, such as painting and decorating or looking for something on a high shelf
- trying special exercises.
Labyrinthitis and vestibular neuritis
With labyrinthitis and vestibular neuritis, your inner ear gets inflamed. The inflammation is usually caused by a viral infection.
The symptoms often get better over several weeks without treatment, although it's sometimes necessary to treat the underlying infection.
- It's often made worse if you drink alcohol, are tired or have another illness. Avoiding these can help to improve your condition.
- It can be treated with a therapy called vestibular rehabilitation.
- Medication such as prochlorperazine or hyoscine hydrobromide (scopolamine) can sometimes help to relieve nausea and vomiting.
- It's important to see your general practice team if you have an ear pain, discharge or pus from your ear, hearing loss or a fever.
Ménière's disease
This is a disorder of the inner ear where you get the feeling of vertigo, ringing in the ear and hearing loss. The vertigo lasts from one to 24 hours. Although there is no cure for Ménière's disease, there are things you can do to help relieve your symptoms.
You can try things like:
- Changing what you eat, for example, eating low-salt foods and avoiding caffeine and alcohol.
- Medication such as prochlorperazine, which may ease the dizziness and vomiting.
- Medication such as betahistine. This may reduce the amount of fluid inside your inner ear and stop symptoms from developing. If you take betahistine every day, it probably will not stop all vertigo, but it may make it less severe and happen less often. It doesn't work in all cases.
- Treatment for tinnitus (ringing in your ears) such as sound therapy and getting information about tinnitus and learning ways to cope with it (information counselling).
- Treatment for hearing loss such as using hearing aids.
- Physiotherapy to deal with balance problems.
On the next page: Self-care for vertigo
Written by HealthInfo clinical advisers. Last reviewed August 2023.
SourcesReview key: HIVER-17706
