Vertigo, Meniere's Disease and Sound Therapy

Meniere's Disease

Meniere's disease - a combination of vertigo, hearing loss and tinnitus, may be one of the most debilitating conditions a person can suffer from. Sudden dizzy attacks, often severe enough to cause nausea and vomiting, come unexpectedly and can incapacitate the sufferer for weeks at a time.

Sound Therapy has brought welcome and lasting relief to many Meniere's sufferers, and has been able to restore normal living to those who previously lived in horror of the unpredictable sense of spinning out of control which could be triggered by lifts, staircases, heights, and large gatherings.

How Sound Therapy help's Meniere's Disease

Sound Therapy pioneer Dr Tomatis had a unique theory on how Sound Therapy helps to alleviate Meniere's Syndrome. He believed that the excess pressure in the vestibular system (the semicircular canals in the ear) is caused by spasms or twitches in the stirrup muscle.

The stirrup muscle is one of the middle ear muscles and its role is to regulate the pressure on the inner ear fluid. The footplate of the stirrup presses on the oval window, the membrane which separates the middle ear from the inner ear chamber. Therefore when the stirrup muscle goes into spasm, there is a sudden change in the pressure in the inner ear fluid, causing a disturbance like a sudden storm to pass through the semi-circular canals. This communicates to the brain via the vestibular branch of the auditory nerve, that there is sudden movement of the head, which gives one the feeling that the world is spinning or falling away beneath them.

Tomatis explains that once the stirrup muscle has been rehabilitated with the regular exercise provided by the Sound Therapy program, it no longer goes into spasm and the Meniere's attacks do not recur.