how to help yourself

Now it's time to take control. You can get better but it is up to you to help yourself. The only way you will get better is to follow your rehabilitation course according to your physio's advice and motivate yourself to do the exercises you're given everyday. Unlike many conditions where you're told to rest - BPPV recovery depends on you being active and finding a medium between doing as much as you can, but not pushing yourself to the point where you're getting distressed and disappointed with yourself.

The most effective way you can do this is by gradually introducing activities into your day. As well as doing the exercises you've been given you must recognise movement or actions which provoke your symptoms and set yourself small targets in order to build the activity back into your life to the point where it no longer provokes the same reaction.

As soon as you find something makes you feel dizzier your first reaction is probably to avoid doing it all together, this is perfectly normal but is not a habit you want to let yourself get into. Remember you're trying to teach your brain to relearn all the things it had previously done without any trouble, how will it learn if you don't expose it to the triggers?

This is the hardest part on the road to get better, it is really hard to force yourself to do the things that make you dizzy when all you want to do is stay in the same position where you've got comfortable and not move. Even if you still have crystals moving around in your inner ear to have to make yourself do as much as possible until they're dissolved.

Here is an example of the kind of action plan you could devise.

• You've found that walking makes you feel very dizzy and you've been avoiding it.
• Start by asking someone to walk with you for two minutes down your own road.
• Try to do the same every day until walking for two minutes becomes easier.
• Extend the amount of time you're out for, and only increase the time when it becomes easier.
• Eventually try to do little walks by yourself, gradually building up the time you spend out.

This is the kind of way you can build to doing activities normally, you should adapt this to your own tasks. It's trial and error all the way, just keep going and don't get disappointed if you don't achieve what you want straight away.

Once you start to notice a real upturn in your abilities and by now you'll also have probably got rid of all the crystals, things I have done to improve my balance which have helped a lot are;

(see these as things to do only once every other day remember gradually is the key)

•baking a cake

•light gardening for an hour only

•reading

•light cleaning

•using a computer

•throwing a ball up and catching it

•hitting a ball to someone else