Hello all,
As most of us have stated, I thought I was the only one and thought I was going crazy!! I also have always been the driver. The first incident I had was driving from SC to NJ. After driving for about 7 hours or so, all of these symptoms started hitting me out of nowhere. I felt like I was in a video game or hypnotized. I right away began to have a mini panic attack and all I saw was if the car was not moving and I was all the white lines from the highway coming at me very fast (again, this made me think that I was going to lose control of the car). I ended up pulling over right away and my wife took over from there.
A few weeks later, we had to drive down go SC again and of course this was still in the back of my mind... Will this feeling come back again?!!!!...
Well indeed it happened again! It is extremely frustrating because I do not know what to do.
What also makes is worse is that I already suffer from anxiety. for a few years I've been trying not to take prescribed medication, I tend to treat it with balanced exercise and natural vitamins (L-Thenine) which helps tremendously.
Anyways, It has been probably about 2 months and I truly do not know what to do.
pleaseeeeeee Help... please e mail me at ArangoKB24 (at) gmail (dot) com
PS - We have to drive back to NJ next week on 7/15/15 and its already killing me. We would fly or even take a bus but our financial status is not the best right now.
Thanks
Please read my comment. You have a hope. I almost gave up. But I think I found the cure! It is a true story.
I am 40 years old now.I used to love driving. My weird dizziness started on November 2013 when I was in a passenger seat while my friend was driving. It was very sudden but very obviously the dizziness were there.
I used to drive fearlessly for 23 years but all of a sudden I became disabled. Even when I drive 30-40 miles per hour, it was struggling for me and made me so dizzy and I had abnormal visual feeling like a tunnel vision. Driving became a nightmare since then. I stopped driving highway for over one year and six month.
I went to ENT(Ear, Nose and Throat), eye doctor, brain MRI, blood work, acupuncture, Korean traditional medicine, chiropractor and neurologist.
Everything was normal. No doctors couldn't figure out.
On Thursday(June 4th, 2015), I went to a different ENT doctor in a big hospital in the downtown hoping for an answer my ear is the problem but got out with disappointment. Nothing was wrong the doctor said. I am a single mother. It was so devastating to experience this crazy symptom not knowing the cause or clue. On the same day, I researched internet out of desperation and found interesting comment above. That was new. I went to a book store and bought the book "Trigger point therapy workbook" by Clair Davies. I watched several youtube video of STERNOCLEIDOMASTOID (SCM) trigger point massage.
I had nothing to lose and was going to try anything to be better. I tried the SCM massage(Please search google where to find SCM in you neck) right away several times a day very diligently for four days. Since the next day, I felt more than 50% better and today I accidentally went into high way and drove for 4 miles without stopping. I couldn't even imagine to drive on highway before because even for local road with 40 miles per hour was struggling for me for long time. Today I can excitedly say my dizziness for one year and six months were gone more than 90%. I felt normal for the first time.
I was so excited and so was my son. I really hope many of you can be cured like me. It was so simple and so easy to fix it. Current medical system was far beyond to find a cure or cause easily which is sad. However, thanks to some brilliant doctors like Travell & Simons and therapist like Davies, the author and her father, and someone like a normal person who took time to write a comment for other people, I think a lot of people will be relieved from this confusing dizziness.
I am so happy. I feel like I am reborn again. Try this massage today and if you got cured, please write a comment and spread the words for others!!!
Oh! Cinnamon! Oh, I think that could be a factor...
I *did* start pouring on the cinnamon back a couple/few years ago for the health benefit(s).
In fact, just this morning, I had Two frozen Trader Joe's waffles with the stuff--and I am feeling a little dizzy now. Granted, I have other factors involved:
--been playing more video games last couple days
--not used inhaler for two days (I take breaks from chemical inhalation)
--not exercising much last 36 hours
What I am also thinking:
++cutting out gluten really helps; no dizziness/foggy headedness
++sleep well
++keep blood flow regular: exercise; not being lazy; get Up!
++calm myself before driving, and start out Slow; go my own pace
And now I am about to ditch the cinnamon. Thanks for the input!
About a year ago, I was driving down the highway and all of the sudden, I had flashes in front of my eyes, i got really dizzy and felt like i was going to pass out. I had to pull over. I was shaking after that of course, because I went into panic mode. I had my 9 yr old son with me and I thought i was going to crash. Every since then I would have small episodes when driving, it is mostly when I am stopped at a red light. Then for about 4 months, i didnt have any symptoms, it felt GREAT! Then one day all of the sudden I pull up to a stoplight and it happens again. first it feels like my eyes are sensitve to the light, and then i feel like i am going to pass out, then comes the panic. I am on exffexor XR for panic attacks anyways, ( I have been on the meds for 10 years or more, they really help me) so now I pretty much have to talk myself thru a panic attack every day while driving. I cant drive far at all. If i come to a stoplight I like to be in the very right lane in case I need to escape and pull over because of an epsiode. After it passes, I am shaky, nauseous and I just want to cry. I hate feeling this way, I use to LOVE driving everywhere, now I can't even hardly make it to work......I wish I knew what was wrong. Its tearing me apart. I feel helpless...good luck to all of you.
I have had this problem for more than 13 years and I just recently discovered what causes it and how to fix it. For most of you who have posted about the dizziness while driving, if you have ruled out inner ear problems, then you simply need to massage the muscles in your neck to remove the knots. The knots in these muscles send mixed up signals to the brain about the position of your head. This sounds like wacko kook stuff, but it is that simple and it is amazing. I highly recommend that you get the book "Trigger point therapy handbook" (blue cover by Davies). It is cheap and it has excellent illustrations about which muscle knots (trigger points) cause pain or tension in different areas, and in this case, also dizziness and vision problems. The book also explains how to avoid accidentally massaging arteries (never massage a pulse).
The muscles you need to massage are called sternocleidomastoid, or SCM. They are on the sides of your neck and run diagonally from the base of your skull behind your ears, down to the front of your collar bone. There are two on each side, sternal and clavicular. The sternal one is the one that is more forward and to the outside, nearest the skin. The clavicular is deeper inside and harder to massage. It takes a couple of weeks of practice to be able to easily get ahold of all the areas that can have trigger points (tenderness), especially down low where they connect to the collar bone. They feel kind of thin and stringy where they attach to the collar bone but if there is any pain in them when you poke around down there, you have to massage those areas some more so it goes away. Don't do too much too soon. It's easy to say, but hard to do, because you want the problem to be fixed immediately. This post doesn't tell how to grab them or do the massage, it's just the notification of the solution. For details, either get the book or look up Youtube videos for SCM or sternocleidomastoid massage. You can do all the massages in the book yourself, you just have to be careful about the arteries in the neck.
There is massive improvement immediately but it has taken almost 3 weeks to have completely normal undizzy driving. It takes a while to get almost all the trigger points to not feel any pain when giving the muscles a squeeze all along the entire length.
You probably also have some sort of neck, tension headache, shoulder or upper back pains or tightness that can be solved with the trigger point massage.
After getting started on the trigger point massage on the SCM, the hard part begins... Trying to improve posture, stop leaning or thrusting the head forward, clenching the jaw, continually looking to the side, etc. I also started sleeping on my back to take the strain off the neck, but it was very difficult to find the right combination of pillow or cushions to not have low or mid back pains and it makes snoring worse.
Over the past 13 years I have been to a general practitioner, three chiropractors, a neurologist, ear/nose/throat specialist, the Yale Balance Center, two sleep specialists (I have narcolepsy), and had neck X-rays and MRIs. None of them identified or helped the problem. No more paying specialists to solve a problem when they can't even figure out what the cause is. The information is out there. All the trigger point (also called myofascial) reference guides state that clavicular SCM trigger points can be associated with dizziness. You would think that the Yale Balance Center, which specializes in dizziness, would know this. They did not know what the cause was and diagnosed central nervous system disorder and wanted to prescribe drugs used for migraine.
Has anyone figured this out yet? I feel like everything is coming at me so fast and it's mainly my peripheral vision causing me issues with this. At night when I try to sleep I feel like I am floating sometimes.
Candi.Malburg (at) gmail (dot) com