Ménière's disease: Living with it

Ménière's disease is a chronic condition of your middle ear that greatly affects your daily functioning. The disease currently has no chance of being cured, but more than 85% of people who suffer from it can do something about it. This is done, for example, with lifestyle changes, the use of medication and very minor surgical procedures. But these surgeries are used only after all other options have been tried and failed to improve.

Ménière complaints

If you suffer from Ménière's disease, you may suffer from the following symptoms:

• Dizziness (minutes to hours)
• Fluctuating hearing loss (then more then less)
• Tinnitus
• (Feeling of) pressure on the ear[1].

These symptoms usually appear after fluid collects or builds up at the inner ear and then starts to press, but in some cases, you may also gradually become increasingly affected[2].

Ménière treatment

To get treatment for Ménière's disease, it is important to first get a diagnosis. You often get this based on the symptoms, that is, what you are suffering from. You would say you should be able to chart that buildup of fluid, but that is only done after the patient has died[3]. So that's why diagnosis is based on your symptoms.

An MRI can also provide insight into whether you suffer from this disease; your doctor will determine if an MRI is necessary for diagnosis.

They also check that you may not be suffering from another illness that is causing you to have these symptoms.

You then receive treatment, which often consists first of changing things in your lifestyle such as:

1. A low-salt diet
2. Avoiding stress
3. Quitting caffeine
4. Avoiding Alcohol
5. Drinking lots of water
6. Having good sleep hygiene

Doesn't this work to reduce Ménière symptoms? If so, you'll often be given medications that cause you to retain less fluid. If that doesn't work (enough), then you can get other medications such as something with steroids and betahistine.

Is this not working either? Then surgical intervention is considered[4].

So, in reality, there isn’t any mental health treatment at all that helps you cope with this disease. Something that would actually be quite useful, given that it’s a chronic condition. Chances are you’ll have to deal with it for the rest of your life.

Ménière's disease nutrition

When it comes to nutrition, the initial recommendation is to follow a low-sodium diet and stop drinking alcohol and caffeinated beverages. If this doesn’t help enough, you might also consider avoiding gluten.

As for salt, it is recommended to stay below 2,000 mg. Among other things, this helps you suffer much less from the dizziness that can be caused by Ménière's disease.

Drinking lots of water should help reduce hearing loss. To cause this effect, you will need to drink a minimum of 35 ml per kilogram of body weight.

Say you are 80 pounds, that means you should drink 2.8 liters of water a day.

As for stopping eating gluten, there isn't a whole lot of evidence - except for one case study where someone experienced less discomfort from the condition after not eating gluten for 6 months - but more research needs to be done on this before they can say this works for everyone with Ménière's disease[5].

Of course, it can be quite difficult to cut back on salt. Maybe you’re used to regularly eating a bag of chips, salty popcorn, or a tasty piece of steak with salt. In that case, you’ll need to change your salt habits. If you find this difficult, hypnotherapy can help you make these lifestyle changes.

For example, if you regularly snack on licorice (salt), you can change that habit by taking a sip of water instead. A hypnotherapist helps you visualize your old behavior with a negative emotion and visualize your desired behavior with a positive emotion. Then you will alternate this until your subconscious is left with the new habit (a sip of water) with a positive emotion.

This can be very powerful, for example, to quickly change your dietary habits with hypnosis, so that you will soon suffer less from Ménière's disease. These types of techniques are also used to help people lose weight by changing dietary habits[6].

In addition, tinnitus due to Ménière's disease can also be treated with hypnotherapy[7]. This is often done with visualizations that give you a sense of control over the volume of the tinnitus. If you suffer from that ringing in your ear for days or hours, it can be very annoying.

By visualizing a kind of volume knob and turning it down, you can do a lot to be less bothered by it.

If you're reading this you may be thinking that this is nonsense and so one, two, three is often not going to work. But if you are put into a hypnotic trance by your hypnotherapist, it is much easier to feel and experience this. You practice together with the therapist on controlling the volume and you are given exercises that you can do at home when you want everything to be quieter for a while.

Ménière's disease exercises

Because you can suffer from spinning dizziness due to Ménière's disease, research is being done to see if spinning exercises can help eliminate this feeling again. It does get annoying when you don't feel confident standing on your feet even between attacks.

Research shows that a few sessions of this type of exercise can help reduce dizziness or vertigo[8].

There are also other exercises to help you suffer less from dizziness or vertigo[9].

There are multiple exercises you can do. For example, you can consciously make movements that normally trigger dizziness in order to train yourself to suffer less from it. This doesn't even necessarily have to be bending down to pick something up, it can also be walking across a shiny floor.

Do you have trouble watching because it seems like the whole world is moving? Then you can also do viewing-stabilization exercises. For example, you look at one point while moving your head.

In addition, you can also do balance exercises[10].

Ménière's disease and your well-being

Dizziness, tinnitus and temporary deafness are symptoms that are not fun to have and have a lot of impact on your daily functioning. Many people who suffer from this disease also have a lower sense of well-being than people who have normal health[11].

Because symptoms fluctuate, you can also suffer a lot of anxiety and tension[12]. You spend the whole time wondering when the next "attack" will occur, which is not helpful at all.

Hypnotherapy can be very helpful in changing eating habits, but that’s not all. Hypnosis is also very effective in reducing anxiety. It can be used, for example, in combination with EMDR therapy. It is also used to treat conditions such as tinnitus and trauma[13].

The real problem with anxiety is your focus. You want to be able to enjoy the moments when you’re not bothered by the condition, but time and again, anxiety holds you back. Hypnotherapy can help you shift your focus from the fear of the future (the next panic attack) to the present moment (and enjoying what you’re doing). This is achieved, for example, by changing your beliefs about those attacks and the impact they have on your life. This doesn’t mean the impact itself changes, but rather that you view it differently, so you can cope with it better and feel less unhappy as a result.

Then, you can also repeat hypnotic suggestions at home, so that you continue to absorb these new beliefs well. These can be beliefs such as:

"I stay in the moment with my mind."

"When I worry about the future I actually suffer twice, once is enough."

"I eat healthy and drink enough water."

These are just examples. Depending on your beliefs and the suggestions you receive, you may repeat something else that better suits your situation.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works and how you can use it to help people? Then join us for the free online masterclass.

Or enroll in one of the HIN's training courses, ideal if you are a coach or otherwise help people. The trainings are conducted online from a professional studio and with plenty of assistance for one-on-one attention.

Also pin this handy infographic:

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