By Mike Spencer
Founder of Meniere’s Help
Researcher and author of Managing Meniere’s Disease and The Need for Balance – Dealing with the Causes of Meniere’s
Is overcoming Meniere’s disease possible?
The official line on Meniere’s disease is that it is treatable but there is no known cause and no known cure. This is what the vast majority of sufferers are told and of course most believe; why wouldn’t they? Tell a patient who has been suffering for many years and believes they have tried everything, that actually there are known causes and therefore known solutions and you could be met with disbelief, disdain and even anger.
This is understandable considering what the sufferer has had to live through and the fact they have constantly been told health professionals that there absolutely is no cure. The literature and online medical websites agree, there is no known cause and no know cure, so it must be true right?
Not exactly!
How do I know? Well read on below, but for starters…..
At the time of writing, I have had a 21 year association with Meniere’s.
- I suffered the worst Meniere’s has to offer for 7 years and thought I had tried everything, including very costly, damaging and unsuccessful surgery.
- For 10 years I lived 95% symptom free through simple but profound dietary and lifestyle changes.
- Since 2012 I have been completely free of Meniere’s.
- For 13 years I have been supporting other sufferers.
- For 7 years I have been a full time independent researcher and writer on Meniere’s. In that time I have corresponded and spoken to thousands of sufferers, doctors, scientists and other health professionals in regards to Meniere’s.
- Most importantly I have watched thousands of sufferers regain their life, either by reducing or eliminating their symptoms or actually eliminating Meniere’s from their life completely. Many of these people had been suffering for many years and most of these people had been told there was nothing more to be done.
So I humbly state that I think I may know a thing or two about Meniere’s by now and I state more strongly that you CAN overcome it, one way or another.
True, there is no ‘miracle cure’, ‘magical super drug’ or any one ‘silver bullet’ that can cure you of Meniere’s but I can confidently say that you absolutely can overcome it.
While nothing is written in stone with this condition and there is no one size fits all, there are some universal truths that apply to all sufferers. You need to gain a true understanding about what you are really dealing with, correlate this with your own individual circumstances, then take the appropriate action and this often needs diligence.
If there were some magical miracle cure I wouldn’t have had to spend so many years researching, communicating with so many sufferers and health professionals or write two books totaling 475 pages to help people overcome this.
In addition to the two self help books published since 2013 , I have been running Meniere’s Help for 13 years, the main website has over 20 pages and this blog over 100 articles and posts. The aim of Meniere’s Help is to help sufferers recover from this horrendous condition or to put it in terms sufferers understand most, help them get their life back.
The sheer numbers of people who have contacted Meniere’s Help alone who have overcome Meniere’s successfully stand as testimony that this can be done, not to mention my own personal case which you might find interesting to read about.
Click here to read Mike’s Meniere’s Story
In the past 4 or 5 years, the vast majority of sufferers who have contacted Meniere’s Help, beaten this condition and regained their lives have read Managing Meniere’s Disease and The Need for Balance. Prior to my writing these books, it was often the sufferers themselves who were the greatest sources of helpful information, through both their successful experiences and their problems. Some of their stories are in the books. I correlate their experiences with scientific medical studies, data and statistics to back everything up and prove it is never a case of simply hearsay much less placebo effect.
It can sometimes need a quantum shift in perception and attitude towards Meniere’s in some people before this becomes obvious.
- The first two steps in overcoming Meniere’s is to change your perception of what you are dealing with and refuse to accept the entrenched dogma of drugs to ‘treat symptoms’, surgery and the all too often spouted “learn to live with it“.
- The next step is to manage your condition, stabilizing your symptoms so you can at least function normally again.
- The final step is to identify and eliminate or correct your own individual root cause(s) so you never have to worry about the symptoms returning.
You need to educate yourself, take that knowledge, correlate it with your own particular case then take action, be that something you need to do yourself or take the information to an appropriate health professional to get checked and/or treated.
If you strip away the label ‘Meniere’s‘, see this idiopathic condition for what it is, simply a set of symptoms, then investigate the pathology of these symptoms you soon find both the root causes and more importantly solutions are indeed known. It may be surprising to some that these possible root causes are actually documented in scientific peer reviewed medical studies, data and statistics. Which begs the question then why are treating health professionals not aware of this?
Some are.
It just depends on which health professional you ask. On average, an ENT doctor or a so called “Meniere’s specialist” will be very compartmentalized and concentrate only on a narrow area of expertise surrounding the ear, nose and throat.
Very few will have comprehensive knowledge of and understand the implications of gut issues, a misaligned musculoskeletal frame, immune system disorders, dental and jaw issues, toxicity or allergies. Fewer still will have any real in depth knowledge of nutrition.
Yet any one of these areas could be where the root cause for Meniere’s symptoms begin in any one individual. This is documented fact in studies cited in many articles on this blog and the evidence of testimonials from sufferers who have contacted Meniere’s Help over the past 13 years, you could say are further proof of this.
The simple fact is that everything within the body is connected and once something becomes out of balance or dysfunctional it can lead to a domino effect or knock on effect and result in dysfunctions and conditions that at first glance may seem totally unconnected.
Health professionals who understand this and take a more holistic approach are still relatively rare but the numbers are certainly growing. It surely must be the obvious common sense approach and how medicine should be practiced. Prevention and correcting root causes rather than the perpetual writing of prescriptions for drugs to simply try to treat resulting symptoms.
The problem with this condition is, simply because of the general perception of “Meniere’s” and its definition as “idiopathic” it means if you do find your root cause, correct or eliminate it and no longer suffer from any symptoms then you will be told you didn’t have “true Meniere’s“.
There can never be a definitive cure because there is no definitive cause. So then what is needed is to find your own cause, or causes (there can be more than one) in your own particular case. Do that and you have found the key to your own particular cure. The question is, do you stubbornly stick with the official line and continue to suffer or do you take things into your own hands and free yourself from this horrendous set of symptoms?
You might ask, “but where do I start once I have changed my perception?”
This is one of several reasons why I spent 7 years researching and writing books on the subject. There are too many variants and differences in each sufferer to do anything else. If there weren’t we could be shouting “we have the cure” and write it in one blog post. That is not the case though.
Meniere’s Disease has several possible root causes, many triggers and contributing factors in each individual case. Find your cause and you have in effect found the key to your solution, cure, answer or what ever words you want to use to describe eliminating these symptoms from your life.
Make no mistake, this can be done, it has been done and is being done all the time. Thousands have done this to my knowledge alone, including myself of course.
The need for Balance is not only true for the inner ear but everywhere in your body, from micro cellular level to musculoskeletal level.
When something is out of sync elsewhere inside the body, this can lead to a knock on effect, or domino effect that ultimately can result in inner ear dysfunction. This is in fact must be true for many disorders and diseases. You do not have to dig that deep to discover this is a simple biological fact.
The problem both doctors and patients face is that modern medical culture is geared almost exclusively to treating the end results, treating the symptoms; never looking for the cause.
Dr Amy Myers, New York best seller with her book ‘The Thyroid connection‘ explains this very well regarding how autoimmune disease is treated. You can read her comments in the article: Can Meniere’s disease be caused by Autoimmunity?
To paraphrase her: autoimmune disease attacks different organs. The sufferer will be sent to a doctor or specialist connected to that specific organ. Treatments will then be administered to stop the symptoms. These drugs will often have side effects in other parts of the body and then the sufferer will go through the same process again. Yet the root problem is what is causing the autoimmune response. Autoimmune disease is a dysfunction of the actual immune system, not the targeted organ. So if the sufferer wants to free themselves from the symptoms completely, the immune system in general is what should be concentrated upon.
The same goes for Meniere’s. The ear is the targeted organ, or the dysfunction of the inner ear is the end result. You need to find what the root cause of that is in your particular case. And it may be rare that it is in or around the actual ear.
From the endocrine system, metabolism and thyroid, the gut, blood flow, the back, the neck, the jaw, dental issues and importantly the immune system in general. Any one of these and more, if dysfunctional or out of balance, may lead to the symptoms of Meniere’s eventually manifesting. Balance in your lifestyle and diet is also important. Poor diet can lead to many dysfunctions and disorders, while prolonged stress can manifest poor health in many different ways, including Meniere’s.
When you have Meniere’s disease, you lose balance in inner ear equilibrium but, as stated above, this loss of balance can be a result of imbalances elsewhere within your body or even your life. Learn how to bring your body and lifestyle back into balance, regain homeostasis and you can stop the symptoms of Meniere’s.
Given the right conditions, the human body can be the best hospital possible. It needs you to create the right conditions and be the best doctor.
Can you really reduce or stop your symptoms? Moreover, can you free yourself from Meniere’s completely?
The evidence from thousands Meniere’s Help has supported over the past 13 years shows us without doubt that yes, absolutely you can.
The answer to this in your own case, can very much depend on you. As stated above, it may take a quantum shift in perception and attitude to what you are dealing with, so then the next question is……..
Do you think you are ready or prepared to do whatever it is you need to overcome Meniere’s?
What value do you really put on regaining your health and your life? Are you willing to actually do what it takes? You may be thinking to yourself, “of course I am ready, why wouldn’t I be?”
Consider the fact that a huge percentage of smokers, when told they have lung cancer continue to smoke. Why is that? We really can be our body’s own worst enemies sometimes, and I do not exclude myself when saying that.
When readers of ‘Managing Meniere’s’ and ‘The Need for Balance’ email Meniere’s Help and say things like, “You saved my life“, this is something money cannot buy.
To me such words are priceless. Not the somewhat over the top flattery of these words but the fact that yet another sufferer has beaten this condition. I suffered horribly for 7 years, I know how you feel if you are a sufferer and I would not wish Meniere’s on my worst enemy.
I rarely publish these types of emails on Meniere’s Help for fear of giving the impression of hype and sensationalism. Trust and integrity is very important in what I do. After all, this is a condition where most fear they are stuck with Meniere’s and often get told they have to learn to live with it, there is nothing more to be done.
The fact is, nothing could be further from the truth.
These flattering messages are slightly embarrassing for me and not really true; it was the sufferer who refused to accept they would just have to ‘learn to live with it”, they got proactive, took the appropriate action in their individual case and got themselves healed . They just needed the right information and pointers in the right direction.
You can read some messages from readers I actually do publish here and here.
If you are suffering from Meniere’s, I know you feel like you would do anything to get your life back; to feel normal again, right? There came a time when I would have drunk kitchen bleach if I thought it would have helped; I was that desperate. I also know how you feel if you are somewhat skeptical or your BS detector is flashing. I was once in the same mindset as you and I have seen a lot of nonsense so called ‘cures‘ come and go on the internet over the years. Healthy skepticism is a good thing in my eyes, but at the same time a closed mind will never free you of Meniere’s or any other ‘dis’ ‘ease’ either.
Simply put, you need to know the how and why, then the what you can do about it. This is what the Need for Balance is there for. Ultimately to give you the information you need to free yourself of Meniere’s.
It may sound like a strange question, but are you really, honestly, ready to do whatever is needed in your case, to live symptom free or even overcome Meniere’s completely, despite all the negativity and naysayers surrounding this condition?
Many sufferers are convinced overcoming Meniere’s disease is simply not possible. This is what they have been told, what they have read. So the very first hurdle to overcome is this understandable, yet wrongly held belief.
How about you?
Albert Einstein allegedly once said, “The one who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The one that walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been.“
If you simply accept the commonly held belief that there is no known cause or cure and that there is no getting over Meniere’s then that is exactly where you will remain, stuck in a cycle of vertigo attacks, brain fog, tinnitus and everything else that comes with this condition. You will be stuck with too many other sufferers going round in circles dependent on drugs that at best give negligible levels of relief and possible side effects, or worse, you will end up gambling with intrusive or destructive surgery as I once foolishly did. You will be entrenched in hopelessness. In short, you will be stuck with Meniere’s ‘disease’.
If you are ready to stop accepting the little to no hope dogma of treat the symptoms with drugs, “nothing more to be done” and “learn to live with it“. If you are ready to educate yourself and take the appropriate action needed in your own case. If you are ready to take your life back, you are in the right place to start.
If your treating health professionals have told you there is nothing more to be done, then it is down to YOU to get proactive. As stated above overcoming Meniere’s completely can be done, has been done and is being done all the time.
Are you ready to start getting your life back? Contrary to popular misguided belief, overcoming Meniere’s disease is very achievable.
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Help other Meniere’s sufferers. Do you have a success story to tell? Have you reduced, managed or completely freed yourself of Meniere’s symptoms? Email Mike at: meniereshelp@gmail.com or tell us all about it in the comments box below
