Thank you Steve for mentioning this too me. I researched this and Kev told me I am the poster girl for this. I guess it's time to ask the doctor about this one. This is something I found:

Patients experiencing cervicogenic vertigo may report the following clinical symptoms: positional unsteadiness or giddiness; a feeling that the ground is moving; postural instability noted especially on turning; and imbalance that is markedly enhanced by sudden head movements, such as neck extension with upward or downward gaze or rising from the supine position. Neck pain is always present in patients suffering from cervicogenic vertigo with muscle tenderness, stiffness, and guarding of the cervical region commonly noted. Neck pain may precede the sensations of imbalance by a period of days to months and is commonly located in the occipital region with radiations to the temporomandibular region, the temporal region, and into the arms. Headache complaints are common and occipital in origin with retro-orbital or band-like referred pain patterns. Occasionally patients may complain of numbness in the arms which is apparently without anatomical pattern. A high pitched tinnitus which may be associated with fluctuating hearing loss and a sensation of fullness in the ear is noted in 30 percent to 60 percent of cases.

There is not a symptom there that I have not experienced in the last several months. The high pitched tinnitus has been going on now for over 2 weeks. The neck pain has been going on for months now and the headaches for even longer. The dizziness when looking up can tip me right over, that's why Kev always keeps an arm very tightly around me when we hug.

Thank you Steve, it's a great starting point.

darlindeb25,

I AM the poster child for cervicogenic headaches LOL! No, seriously, I know how bad this hurts, I have experienced the dizziness, panic attacks, and the list goes on just as you posted below. Now, this was about 4 years ago and EVERY DAY! My original diagnoses was Occipital Neuralgia. But nothing, no conservative measures ever worked or touched the pain. I finally switched to a spinal PM whose speciality was headaches coming from the cervical spine. He found the culprit right off and it was osteoarthritis of the C3/C4 facet joints..and very severe. My NS was in shock when he saw my MRI and basically said, "Surgery immediately!" I then had a fusion which obliterated all of these symptoms. Now, this is me speaking, others may have a different experience. But I can tell you I went through the ringer until my current PM found the problem. I would strongly suggest an MRI of the cervical spine. In the meantime I would NOT do PT, traction, or any spinal manipulations until you can get this figured out. If your cervical spine is fine, then you will have to look at other things. But when I saw your post, I just wanted to give my input. I wish you well with this, I know for me, it was incredibly painful. Hang in there.

Deb,

I forgot mention the tinnitus. I had that too. To make a long story short, I had a hearing test, the MRI of course and a brain scan. The MRI told the story and the other two tests turned out fine. So, my PM explained it like this. Consider the neck as a fuse box. All nerves in the body pass through the neck. And because it is tight and packed in there with all those nerves, there is "crosstalk" going on. The C3/C4 level, my culprit, is high up in the neck. Therefore, with arthritic facets smashing nerve roots for lack of a better description, those nerves were "talking" to the auditory nerves. It drove me batty! I could lay down at night and hear my own heartbeat, loud and clear plus this tick, tick, tick noise. And, yes, I had constant vertigo and sicker than a dog from med after med. In the long run, and 3 years later, a fusion stopped that whole mess. Now, this is just me. But I still say a cervical MRI is in order as well as a spine doc. Hang in there, I know the headaches and dizziness are horrible.

Oh my goodness!!

I was just wandering around reading the day's postings and saw this.

I have tinnitis -- drives me nuts. Have the fan on all day and night to block the sound.

But, I have this real weird thing -- when I back my mobility scooter down the hallway to my apartment and turn my head to the right (can't turn left) to see where the heck I'm going backwards, I get all dizzy. I was wondering what the heck was causing it.

Tah! Dah! Thanks for posting this

Barb

A few years ago, my husband Alan had vertigo. WE didn't know what it was, I called the paramedics, they took him to the hospital and diagnosed vertigo and gave him meclizine, (I think it's called that), What it actually does is make you sleepy so you don't get dizzy. I asked the pharmacist how it works and this is what he told me. OF course we followed up with a nose and throat guy who told Alan, NO MORE SALT!!!

So from that day on there was NO MORE SALT, in any shape or form in his diet. Slowly (very slowly) we introduced some products that have a small amount of sodium but he never uses salt on anything and I don't cook with it. But some stuff does contain things like 120 of the sodium. We don't go near any soups (they have something like 1200 of sodium. Are these companies crazy?

Now for the tinnitus. Alan has had that since the vertigo.

But in his case (and he does have tinnitus). But he hears like the heat is on.
like psssssssssssssssssssss.

amazing.

bye for now.

Melody

Moose,

I just wanted to say that you could have a case of Vertigo and not necessarily cervicogenic headaches. When Deb mentioned all of her symptoms in another post, they were identical to the ones I used to have. I, too, was given Meclizine a LONG time ago before they really figured out what the poblem was. But since you didn't mention headaches or neurological deficits so to speak down your arms and such, I really believe it may be something else altogether.

So Kathi--did your neck and shoulders give you problems, not just your neck? This seemed to start in my right shoulder, well, neck and shoulder. KEv would massage and massage the area and he could feel the mass. He thought it was a pinched nerve. Then when I told him it was on the left side now, he told me it can't be the same nerve. Was making him nuts. Now, my neck will hurt, then my left shoulder blade starts to tighten up, crossing over to the right shoulder blade. When it goes into my arm, it's like a heaviness, a steady ache, and the feeling that I can't lift my arm--every touch hurts. It used to come and go, but now it just seems to move around, but never leaves. When I first moved here, my headaches went away and Kev said it's because the salt air is so good for me. The headaches came back last summer and have been consistant since then. The ringing in my ears came and went, but has not left me in weeks now. I wake in the night to go to the bathroom and I can't get back to sleep from the ringing. I refer to the sound as cicadas or crickets, yet it also resembles the hisssssssss of a heater too. All I know, I want it all gone!!!!!

Hi Deb,

It all started with severe headaches in the back of my skull about 3 weeks after a hysterectomy. The pain at that time never went into my arms at all. So, for 3 years the docs at the medical center tried various conservative treatments but never found the right pain generators. Then I switched to a Spine Group and the PM there is the one that found it was the C3/C4. So, I had the fusion and it took care of all those headaches, sounds, dizziness...you name it. BUT...at the same time as that fusion they told me the C5/C6 was bad but my Neurosurgeon did not want to fuse both at once as he wanted to see how well I healed from the first one. So, I got about two years worth of waiting. Now, just this last spring I started to have pain in my shoulders and upper back, it bypassed my arm and went right into my thumbs. So, I go back to the Neurosurgeon and he told me it would get progressively worse as the disc was pressing on the spinal cord. And if I did nothing I could expect neurological deficits.

By August my penmanship was nothing but scribbles, I was dropping things and the pain was worsening. So, I had the C5/C6 fused in September.

And, I am going to add that you will know when it is a cervicogenic headache as the pain is horribly severe...enough to make you want to scream and I am not being dramatic. I know of one gal who became suicidial over it. And her story was not one of drama either. She was in a rural area and just could not get help from any place near her. It is that bad.

If it is the lower levels of your cervical spine, such as the C5, C6, and C7, it will refer pain downwards usually i.,e, shoulders, upper arms, forearms and depending on what precise level it is, either your thumb, index finger and middle finger.

It sounds to me like you are having severe muscle spasms. But like someone said the other day, "Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?" It can be the nerves causing the spasms or the spams clamping down on nerves.

If you had some Valium you could probably kick some of that out. I just got back from massage therapy because the spasms were kicking in again. And boy, do I feel much better now. But I know it is ALL from my neck.

might not work for everyone. I have to first stress that MRIs showed no organic spinal problems, other than not being 22 anymore. But this was my plan:

1. See an ENT who specializes in tinnitus. There aren't many. He/she will diagnose your condition by yanking your head around. It won't help much, but it will get a you a script for PT.

2. See a PT who specializes in manipulation. Mine also prescribed a few mild exercises, but her best trick was loosening my neck with mild (hand) traction and using a "wedge" to loosen the connective tissue down my back. This ended the crepitis (the scraping sound you can hear when you turn your head) and improved my posture tremendously.

3. See a massage therapist who specializes in myofascial trigger point release. That's not the same as "myofascial release"--they're not related, except in name. The words "trigger point" are key. There is no way to just stretch out or exercise a trigger point. If you can't find a therapist, get the treatment books through Amazon (sorry, can't remember the name right now).

4. See an occupational therapist. Mine helped me sit at the PC better and gave me some more stretches and exercises. Only took one session.

5. If you have TMJ, get it treated. I went to the Tufts center in Boston, which was marvelous. TMJ is highly related to neck problems. (I got an appliance to stop nightly grinding and intraoral PT to relax jaw muscles.)

6. Take out a mortgage to pay for above.

Some of you might like to read on the Thoracic Outlet forum here- If your MRI of the C spine shows no real problems that could be causing symptoms.
If your symptoms are mostly upper body ??
Or if you had any repetitive motion injuries or shoulder injuries.

some info links-
TOS info:
http://www.nismat.org/ptcor/thoracic_outlet/
http://tos-syndrome.com/newpage12.htm
http://tos-syndrome.com

Tos forum-
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forumdisplay.php?f=24