Waking up dizzy and off balance

Hi,

I haven’t been diagnosed with m.s, but it is something the neurologist has mentioned due to several symptoms and an MRI which showed lesions on my brain, but I was just wondering if anyone has woken up in the morning feeling like they are on a boat that is rocking violently :slight_smile: literally for about an hour and a half I felt completely off balance and like I was going to fall over and felt like I was rocking, it has got better slowly but I still feel off balance and a bit unsteady on my feet.

thanks xx

Hi Amy

It sounds like it could be vertigo to me. Does it make you more unsteady moving your head about? Do you feel at all nauseous with movement? Have a look at Dizziness (vertigo) | MS Trust

If it is vertigo, there are exercises which can help. This is a good guide to a load of different exercises, some of which might help: Brain & Spine Foundation | Vestibular rehabilitation exercises

I saw a physiotherapist a few years ago who taught me some very simple exercises for vertigo. You sit down (to avoid falling over) without resting your back on any support and turn your head from side to side while keeping your eyes focussed on an object (try holding up a pen). You do this for as long as you can, then stop, recover your equilibrium and do it again, aiming to do it for a little bit longer. I used the timer on my mobile phone to time it. You should do this several times a day. To begin with you might only manage 20 seconds before either feeling sick or just incapable of continuing. The aim is to build up to a couple of minutes. I’ve found that it works for me. An alternative is to keep your head still and move the object with your hand following it with your eyes.

Sue

My first symptoms were dizziness and balance issues. They were with me 24/7 all day every day when I was diagnosed with RRMS in Feb 2016.

In Nov 2016 I was re-diagnosed with PPMS. However the dizziness and balance had improved a lot. Now it is very minor. So now my worst symptom is fatigue.

Your symptom is pointing at Vertigo as against what I had. At the time my walking was all over the place (drunk) but now I walk in a straight line again but I get tired quickly.

Can`t bloody win.

Every time I turn over in bed and at times I loose my balance, most mornings I feel sick from it too.

As a general comment (not directed at any one person), dizzyness could be caused by diplopia (double vision) which is not uncommon with MS.

In normal diplopia, the two eyes “see” slightly different scenes and the poor old brain has to try and fuse these into one picture od the world in front of one.
I have diplopia (developed after MS struck) and this is corrected by prism lenses in my glasses.
I have a feeling of being dizzy until I put the glasses on in the morning.

My suggestion is to get tested by a good optometrist (i.e. not at a high street mass market optician) and ask to be checked for diplopia. HINT - an eye test is free if you had/have a parent with glaucoma.
There are ways of testing yourself, but they will not tell you which eye is the problem (if there is a problem).

Note that diplopia is one of those things that has to be notified to the DVLA if you drive.

If it is not the eyes, then vertigo (see the post #2 from Sssue above) is a likely culprit.

Geoff

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Thanks Geoff.

I do get it even if wearing my glasses, so when I am reading in bed and throughout the day since my fall, when the GP asked me about my eyes I felt awful because it’s really hard to know what symptoms. What as I was diagnosed with drusen on the macular following a period of time when I lived far north in Shetland when I was seeing wobbly lines instead of straight ones. I have been bowled over by the MRI results as I thought in the past they had ruled out MS as I have had tingling in limbs for so long on and off and after my daughter was born quite a severe case. Over the years ad lots of investigations for bowels bladder, numbness eye problems hearing problems, all of which I have read about since Monday. I didn’t ask the right questions of the GP and now I am regretting it.