Posted by beardedlady on March 6, 2002, at 8:34:44
In reply to weird symptom, posted by SusanG on February 20, 2002, at 12:29:49
Hey--I found this old post and thought you might like to know another thing those brain zaps could be! Migraines.
I have had them for years (way before my anxiety/insomnia began), and they got worse after my daughter was born. Sometimes I'll be sitting at the computer, and it'll feel like the floor dropped. It's usually just a split second thing. They started becoming more frequent in the last few years, after I started Serzone, but I don't think it's at all related. My neurologist told me this floor-dropping sensation is fairly common and usually not a problem.
Anyway, I have had opthalmic migraines--moiré patterns with bright flashing lights or halos--without pain and vomiting all my life. It runs in my family.
Last June, I got a dizzy spell--it was not vertigo, as the room wasn't spinning. It felt like the ceiling was too low and the walls were too narrow, and the floor seemed to bob up and down at times--like a longer version of Brain Zaps. It went away after a week, and I was fine. It came back two months later, so I went to the entdoc, had an ENG, took vertigo pills. Even though I had a sinus infection just before it started, I was told it was not, in my case, related to that. The entdoc told me it might be a migraine that just never went away. I finally saw a neurologist. My MRI and CT scans were both clean (neurodoc says my brain's in pristine condition; that's because it's never been used). He says this is a form of migraine, and it won't go away until the cycle is broken.
I took a pill for high blood pressure (calcium channel blocker?) for a while, but it didn't seem to help. Symptoms ALWAYS got WORSE with my PERIOD and got better during the middle of my cycle, when I ovulated.
And guess what: the first time I got it was a few days after I changed my birth control pill to a lower estrogen dose. Symptoms went away after a week. Two months later, I quit birth control pills altogether, and the symptoms returned. They didn't go away. I tried going back on my original bc pill, and I got so dizzy I couldn't stand it.
I know men have this problem, too, but it is certainly hormone related in my case--and maybe in the cases of those others, especially the ones who've had their innards outed.
If anyone else has this unusual dizziness problem (not just the brain zaps) and has been treated for it, I'd love to know what works. Mine is very minor now (a few docs have said it will probably just peter out, though it's been seven months!), but it is not completely gone.
Anyway, try the migraine avenue. The tingly arms and legs and stuff can easily be part of it, and there is certainly a connection between migraine and stroke.
Phew. That was long.
bearded lady : )>
poster:beardedlady
thread:13781
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020301/msgs/96697.html