Why Dizziness Is Not Only An Inner Ear Problem

Most cases of dizziness are mistaken for inner ear problems, but the reality is far more complex—and most doctors are missing crucial clues that could resolve decades of suffering.

 In this episode, Dr. Bagnell and May Bagnell, IHP expose the unseen factors behind chronic dizziness that traditional tests overlook—like sensory imbalances, brain compensation, and neural performance. Discover how advanced functional neurology tools are opening a new window into the true root causes, beyond what MRI scans or ENT visits can reveal.
You'll learn:

• Why longstanding dizziness often stems from systemic sensory mismatches—not just inner ear disruptions
• How asymmetries in the vestibular and visual systems can go unnoticed with standard testing but are key to resolution
• The role of stress, emotional regulation, and neurological networks in balance and anxiety, and why they shouldn't be ignored
• Concrete protocols for retraining the brain’s response to motion—restoring stability by using precise, personalized rehab strategies
• Real stories of patients who recovered from decades of imbalance through targeted, cutting-edge assessments and therapies

 This episode is perfect for anyone tired of managing symptoms and ready for actual healing. If you've experienced chronic dizziness, unexplained balance issues, or emotional distress linked to imbalance, this is your critical next step.
Understanding the true causes of dizziness can unlock the potential for complete recovery—don’t settle for just managing your symptoms when science now offers a pathway to true balance.

 Join us to see how shifting the focus from structural guesses to performance-based assessments illuminates the root and rapidly accelerates healing.
 Your journey to a life without limits starts here.
#dizziness #vestibularmigraines #anxiety #functionalneurology

For more information, visit us at www.bagnellbraincenter.com. 

You CAN Heal! We CAN Help!!

Transcript

May Bagnell (00:01.912)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the NeuroCollective podcast. We are excited to come again with another episode of the Neuro Collective. And I'm here in the studio with Doc Bagnell. Good morning.

Dr. Bagnell (00:02.721)
Everyone.

Dr. Bagnell (00:16.098)
Good morning. Here we go.

May Bagnell (00:17.612)
All right, here we go. So today we're going to be focusing on something that's really important. We get phone calls about this all the time. And the title of today's podcast is Why Dizziness is not just an inner ear problem. a lot of times people will call and they say, I have chronic dizziness for years. I've been to the ear doctor, I've been, I've done ENT, I've done all these different things. and of course, we know that balance has a lot to do with.

the vestibular system, which of course is in the inner ear. But what we want to highlight today are all the other all the other parameters that maybe have not been looked at yet that contribute to this feeling of dizziness. Right, Doc?

Dr. Bagnell (01:01.58)
That's exactly right. We want to look at initially why do people live with dizziness? Why do they live with it? We just had a client recently who's had dizziness for twenty years. Twenty years. And he said, you know, between zero and ten, I would all those years be it'd be about a three or four the way I'd grade it. So it wasn't unmanageable, but he learned to live with it. He compensated to it. And he was very active.

Very successful in business and his life and a family, and he was very active physically. So it didn't limit him in those ways. Some of his other problems, though, were pretty severe, and they got worse after he got very sick a few years ago. So it looked like an inflammatory process may have made his underlying condition worse. But for 20 years, so why do people live with dizziness? I mean, that's that's a big concern. Number one, what you said.

May Bagnell (01:34.178)
Uh-huh.

May Bagnell (01:47.012)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bagnell (01:55.704)
They've been to a lot of different doctors or therapists or clinicians, and no one's able to get to the actual source, right? That may be a reason they're living with it. many times they're told, like you've mentioned in other podcast episodes about labs, but even diagnostic tests, everything looks normal. We've checked your hearing, we've checked your, you know, your eyes with goggles on. Looks normal. So many times things are overlooked, or in a way, this is not really correct.

May Bagnell (02:02.978)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bagnell (02:25.299)
underlooked, I'm gonna say, because there haven't been yeah, there haven't been tools for that clinician or doctor to look deeper into the system than what is typically thought of, you know, the more standardized test.

May Bagnell (02:26.948)
I knew you were gonna say that.

May Bagnell (02:39.362)
Yeah. Well, and I I think you what you said was, and a lot of times our clients will confirm this, is that, you know, they've been taught to manage the symptoms, right? They've been taught to deal with how to manage it. And and of course, and we can't blame them for that, because if there's no solution, then you've got to have management. That's really the only other option. Otherwise you can't function or do the things that you want to do in this life, right? but we find that dizzy dizziness is often dismissed because it can't always be seen.

Dr. Bagnell (02:59.949)
That's right.

May Bagnell (03:07.656)
in traditional scans, right? It can't be seen in the in the traditional ways in which we're looking for the cause of dizziness. And so I really would love for you to expand upon this because you know I know that the technology that we have in functional neurology and then even more recently technology that we brought into the clinic really has now allowed you as a clinician who understands this, but to be able to see further

Dr. Bagnell (03:09.709)
That's exactly right.

May Bagnell (03:36.606)
more clearly, with with more precision, so that you can then create that ability to for that vestibular system and brain, not just a vestibular system, to start to signal and fire together correctly, right? To have some sort of a balance and and be able to heal.

Dr. Bagnell (03:55.468)
Yeah, well that's a great way to think about it is first of all, we have sensory systems that give our information brain, and we're all familiar with this. Our eyes are probably are the primary for human beings, giving sensory information about the environment to our brain. So if you had one eye, and I was talking about this with a young patient of ours, an 11-year-old boy, trying to explain it to him yesterday, if one eye was both eyes were able to see, but one eye was very sharp.

May Bagnell (04:10.852)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bagnell (04:23.393)
And you could see everything when you covered the other one. But when you switched, it was very blurry. That wouldn't be left alone. And you would say maybe you could describe it like this one eye is a bit weaker than the other eye, right? So, but we wouldn't leave it that way. Even in optometry or ophthalmology, they would probably want to prescribe some kind of lenses for that person to help improve the symmetry of the way the eyes are focusing, because it affects the brain.

May Bagnell (04:35.428)
Mm-hmm.

May Bagnell (04:53.347)
Yes.

Dr. Bagnell (04:53.483)
So other sensory inputs, the the body is putting input, sensory input to our brain. So if you do not feel something on one side of your body, you're more likely to get injured, right? If we have had nerve damage like I have had in my right leg, I've had that for some time and I've healed very dramatically through different therapies. But the sensory input is different than on the other side of my body. So I do things to try to improve that because without the sensory input,

May Bagnell (05:06.488)
Uh-huh.

May Bagnell (05:18.008)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bagnell (05:23.105)
The brain is trying to compensate to what it doesn't have, to figure it out. But this leads to a decrease in performance and in sometimes symptoms. So now let's come to the inner ear, the vestibular. It is accepted in medicine, usually in EENT, the EENT world. And I won't even try to pronounce all that for people, but you know what I'm talking about: the ear doctor, right? Ear, nose and throat doctor. So

May Bagnell (05:27.788)
Right. Right.

Dr. Bagnell (05:51.904)
It's accepted that there some asymmetry is with within acceptable ranges. Like a lot of people have that. So you're within a 18, 20% asymmetry, like we talked about the eyes. You're okay as long as you don't have symptoms. And so I think about that and I understand that. We understand that. But yet, is that the best way to do it? We don't like to do that with the eyes, and we really don't like to do that with the body. And if you couldn't taste something on one side of your tongue, you wouldn't like that very much.

So, what we're finding is that one reason people live with dizziness is because they're not tested in a way that the asymmetry can be brought out. And not just dizziness, right? And you and I will talk about that maybe at the end, perhaps, that the asymmetry or the imbalance in the way these two systems are sending signals in can lead to a whole host of other changes for the person that

May Bagnell (06:32.067)
Right.

Dr. Bagnell (06:49.409)
Have no dizziness. But today the focus is dizziness, and we need to look at this sensory system and we need to be able to measure it very accurately and understand very precisely what is going on. And does that give us a window into how to stabilize both cis sides of the system or make them symmetrical to resolve the dizziness?

May Bagnell (07:09.206)
I love that. You mentioned something before about how the brain compensates. And we also know that in dizziness, and I found this to be true in my own experience of this and in balance unbalance issues years ago, is that people often avoid movement because it triggers a dizziness. But then what ends up happening is that avoiding movement creates patterns for the brain to be less adaptable, right? So because the brain needs movement, as we know, one of the most important

Dr. Bagnell (07:33.741)
That's right.

May Bagnell (07:37.028)
crucial things for the brain is movement. And so, so this is an important thing. Learning to live with it can create more challenges for the brain than correction, you know, then seeking the correction. Of course, if you don't know the correction exists, then you just do what you need to do to manage it. So let's move into why it may be happening, right? So, you know, we just address like why some pipe why we live with dizziness, if that's you know all we have. But let's turn the corner up

Dr. Bagnell (07:47.778)
Yes.

May Bagnell (08:05.944)
find out like why could this be happening? Because we know we already opened up with the title that it's rarely just an inner ear problem. what else could be you spoke to this a little bit about asymmetry, but speak to us about what it is that you're looking at for that kind of measurement.

Dr. Bagnell (08:23.085)
So let's we'll start out with the premise that perhaps this is very well calibrated for the person when they're young, right? And it actually excuse me.

May Bagnell (08:29.272)
This meaning is

For for our listeners who are only on audio, you pointed to your ears, but you said this and you just pointed to yours.

Dr. Bagnell (08:36.171)
Okay, yes. Right. So the inner ears, the vestibular apparatus has to be calibrated and it gets calibrated when we're young, when we're children and we're turning our head, babies in fact, turning our head and looking at different things in our environment. Our mommy, our daddy, right? We're looking around, we're looking at the dog, we're looking down, we're looking up. And as we're doing that, and then we start to crawl and move our head at the same time and we're looking, all of that movement

Head movement, body movement, and ocular movement starts to integrate properly so that in adulthood it's it's seamless. It works without any problem. So some things can disrupt that developmental integration, like illness, like an injury. How many babies or children have fallen and hit their head? Of course it doesn't happen every time they hit their head, but all it takes is one time to cause a change in the way it may be developing.

Illness would be another thing of strong viral situation, or maybe they have some type of reaction or response to an immunization or to a medication, an antibiotic. So inflammatory changes can cause it, impacts can cause it. as we get a bit older, headaches can contribute to it, migraines, a neck injury. I'm pointing to my neck, a neck injury can contribute to a problem with the vestibular system. And even as we're adults, stress can make a

May Bagnell (09:43.502)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bagnell (10:03.473)
mildly weak vestibular system more severe. So people who have a bit of dizzy, yeah. People who have a bit of dizziness or they complain of it, like the first client I told you had about a three out of ten, and but it's seven to eight to nine after he got sick. Well, stress can do the same thing. It can make a poor it's like a stress test, right? I always think of, because of my age, the space shuttle. They would always stress test every single part.

May Bagnell (10:07.33)
Yep, that's what I wanted to highlight. Yes.

Dr. Bagnell (10:32.799)
on that thing and still things went wrong. Why do they stress test it? To determine where the breaking point is. So stress brings out the weakness in our brain systems functionally.

May Bagnell (10:43.18)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, that makes a lot of sense. And having understood that personally, you know, and and years ago when I was dealing with my vestibular condition, we already know that I probably had vestibular weakness from before that went undetected because no real symptoms showed up, right? Although we go back and we see some things that, that might have been the beginning of that breakdown in the vestibular system for me.

but then you know, some real high-level stress experiences that threw me completely into that state where now we really needed to focus on correction. So yeah, I understand that. And when we work with our clients, you know, one of the things that we will often highlight is checking in with them on their current stress level. Like you're a human being, you're going to have stress, there's different things that are going to happen in life, you know. But how we handle that stress.

makes all the difference in the world. What we do to not shelter ourselves from stress, but how to cushion that stress. Let's say it that way. How to cushion it with the way in which we practice and how we take care of our well-being so that we can have a bit more resiliency towards stress so that it doesn't, you know, create a huge physiological breakdown in the body. But I'm glad that you brought that up because that's a really important key component.

That I think most people do not attribute to the chronic vestibular dysfunction that they have. I mean, obviously there's a mechanism that's gone awry that needs to be strengthened and fixed. and the lifestyle choices and the way in which we function and we think, right, and we behave can also affect and exacerbate that condition.

Dr. Bagnell (12:34.645)
That's right. That's right. Yeah. So there's there's multiple or various types of things that could bring it about. And you know, it's another thing I was thinking of is when the eyes are telling the brain one thing and the inner ear is telling the brain something else, and the body is telling the brain something else, it's very difficult for that brain and it starts to lose certainty about things. I'll give you the perfect example of that statement I just made. Motion sickness on a boat.

May Bagnell (12:55.182)
That's right.

Dr. Bagnell (13:01.355)
My brain is telling me one thing. My eyes are telling me something. Cause I'm that's why they always say, get on the on the on the deck and look at the horizon. And sometimes, and I've been out in the ocean here when I was a kid, being on the fishing boat, and he said, Jump in the water. And I'm like, What? Jump in the water. Yeah, hold the rope and just jump in the water next to the boat. I said, Are you crazy? Because I was so incredibly sick. I'm gonna tell you, I was scared out of my wits. That might have stopped it. But I jumped in the water.

May Bagnell (13:18.99)
To stabilize yourself. Yeah.

Dr. Bagnell (13:27.947)
And we're here, we're fishing. I'm like, dude, the the ocean is like black. It's so dark. I jumped in, I'm holding on to it for maybe two minutes. I climbed back in the boat, I scampered back in. But I tell you, the motion sickness was gone. So I don't know if it was fear and adrenaline, but actually I think it was just you you all of a sudden your body is picking up the motion of that, and it's not secondarily like you're in the you know, because you what you want to do is go lay down in the cabin. That's the worst thing you can do. So it was a very interesting experience about how my

May Bagnell (13:54.37)
Yeah.

Dr. Bagnell (13:57.718)
My eyes were saying something different than my body and my vestibular system, but I had to resynchronize them and that took away the sickness.

May Bagnell (14:04.044)
Yep. Right, right. Yeah. So that makes sense because you took away one major input, which is the, you know, the the disbalance of being on the boat, even though you were in the water, it didn't have the same sensation for your brain. So let's talk about what most people

Dr. Bagnell (14:21.761)
Can't do that on a cruise ship. You can't jump overboard on a cruise ship.

May Bagnell (14:24.6)
Well, no, not a cruise ship. But also you're gonna have a you're gonna have a little more stability on a cruise ship than you will be on a fishing boat. So there's there's better ways to balance oneself on a cruise ship. all right, so let's talk about what most people miss. And this isn't like a judgment, this isn't like, you know, any of that, other than to highlight the differences of why this has been missed. And i it interestingly, in a conversation with a recent patient, you know, we were talking about his care and moving forward in this care and

Dr. Bagnell (14:29.745)
yeah. yeah.

May Bagnell (14:53.63)
And you know, rightly so. He's still left with some uncertainty, even though you showed him with great certainty where his patterns are, where the deficits are, and where the correction lies. he's still left with an emotional uncertainty of many, many years of going after this and everyone saying they had an answer, right? And they had a solution, right? and well-meaning, certainly, because they studied it, they knew and they were certain they were going to be able to fix this person.

in their condition. And so, you know, one of the things we talked about is could to consider the fact that the testing that was just done was very different from any other testing he had done before. And when we had lack when we lack certainty about whether we're going to invest in something in our lives or, you know, put ourselves towards another course of care, you know, we gotta, we gotta think, is the testing different? Is some has something different been shown that hasn't been shown before? Right.

Dr. Bagnell (15:36.365)
Correct.

Dr. Bagnell (15:52.365)
Yeah. Right.

May Bagnell (15:52.456)
so anyway, so I just wanted to highlight that because that was just, you know, straight off a conversation from the other day. but we know that sometimes a normal MRI doesn't mean that the brain is functioning normally, right? Right. Because a lot of people will say, My MRI is normal. My doctor said my MRI is normal. We're looking at what? And you were just saying structure versus function. So you want to elaborate on that?

Dr. Bagnell (16:02.871)
Correct. Yeah, that's structural and functional.

Dr. Bagnell (16:12.863)
Right. Yeah. The the function of the vestibular system is really much more dynamic than just looking at a static picture, right? Like if we were looking at the bones and x-ray. They even have x-rays where you can be moving. And we're we're just talking about that as a as another similarity. We're not using x-ray, but you can look at the spine as it moves on x-ray, or you can look at soft tissues, or you can look at the brain through a special kind of MRI.

And see how it's functioning and uptaking oxygen or blood. But the vestibular system, you we have three different canals on each side. That's part of it. And then we have these things called odoliths on each side, which are related to gravity sensation. So acceleration, gravity, you know, position. And so we have to be able to analyze each one of those areas particularly. And we have the technology and the tools and the understanding on how to do that now, which is is really gonna be

breakthrough for most people. This is why, as you said, have you had this kind of technological underst assessment? If the answer is no, then there's a reason to have it, right? See if you can pinpoint what is the source.

May Bagnell (17:17.017)
Right.

May Bagnell (17:21.944)
Right, right. Well, yeah, that's true. And we realize that most evaluations are looking for disease, right? They're not measuring performance. And that's the difference between you know, functional neurology, which is measuring performance, right? And in all the different ways in which we do that, you know, through data. So

Dr. Bagnell (17:34.103)
That's right. That's right.

May Bagnell (17:48.81)
so if you're listening to this and you you know, as a listener, you're watching this podcast, thank you for being here. and you're experiencing this, you know, we want to give you enough information and knowledge to discern the differences so that you can make decisions for yourself. You know, I I really value distinctions, right? Because otherwise, if everything gets grouped into one same thing, then we can't pick out, you know, the the distinctive aspects of

the differences of why choose to get examined in this way, even if you've had all the other tests done, right? Because all the other tests are measuring or trying to rule out disease and not necessarily measuring complete performance.

Dr. Bagnell (18:32.917)
Right, the performance of each of the structures in that vestibular system. You know, I mean, if we were to just kind of talk about this more globally for a moment, the largest percentage of dizziness causes are a simple fix. b P P V. Most people have seen those those initials, right? Benign, paroxysmal, positional vertigo. I woke up, it's very short lived, I turned my head and wow, the whole room is spinning or I'm spinning.

That's a very simple fix in most cases. It's positional, it's short-lived, you haven't had it before. The challenge is the rest of the types of conditions that relate to dizziness, right? And that could be things like PPPD, triple P D, which is another type of this dizziness, which is a much harder one. There's ones that are involved different structures in that ear. But our goal really is to measure the performance of all of those different.

integrating systems. So it's not always the failure of one system. It's not always, as people will hear this, they'll say, yeah, the crystals. It's not always the crystals. When it is that type of problem, canal canal lithiasis or cupulolithiasis, people might know that language, then those are are fixable types of things in a shorter span of time. It's the more complex ones, the ones that have been longer standing as you mentioned, someone 10, 20 years, eight years

May Bagnell (19:32.312)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bagnell (19:58.114)
You know, these types of things change the brain's networks, not just the the vestibular system. And then the whole network needs to be readapted and adjusted, not just compensated.

May Bagnell (20:07.97)
Right. Right. And the other thought I had too is, you know, why this might get missed is because oftentimes, and I know this was true for me, when I went to an ENT, you know, to check my hearing and why this is connected to my balance issues, right? And they checked my hearing, but they did they didn't check me in movement. They checked me while I was very still. And one of the things that we know, especially with this access AI is

Dr. Bagnell (20:30.669)
Right. Sitting still.

May Bagnell (20:37.678)
Technology is that we're checking the vestibular system and the and all of those networks and so forth in movement, right? You are you're creating movement to see how all of this behaves in real life, not like someone sitting still trying to not feel dizzy. And it kind of might create a little feeling of disbalance for the person while they're being tested. But that's a good thing because you want to see what is the activation, what activates.

Dr. Bagnell (20:46.189)
That's right.

Dr. Bagnell (20:51.821)
That's right.

May Bagnell (21:05.804)
those networks and that system while we're in a controlled environment and you're safe, right? So that's really important. And then the other thing that I wanted to bring up is the connection between anxiety and balance issues, right? Balance conditions, d dizziness as people will call it, or even their ver vertigo, right? because sometimes what we realize is what looks like anxiety may actually be the brain feels not secure, right?

Dr. Bagnell (21:12.311)
Yeah, that's right. Very safe. Right.

May Bagnell (21:34.377)
the brainstem might be involved, right? There could be a lot of other things that are creating that. And then it becomes a physiological reason for anxiety, not necessarily a mental health or emotional reason for anxiety. Because I remember feeling anxious and really not having anything to feel anxious about, right? That made logical sense to me.

You know, I I feel I have anxiety in my body, the knot in my stomach, all of this in my throat. I feel anxious, I feel jittery. But there was nothing going on in that particular time of my life where it warranted feeling anxious, right? yet I was feeling anxious until we've resolved the issue, we've realized it was a network, a neurological issue. You helped to help to create what I needed to fix it, and then

Dr. Bagnell (22:13.825)
That's right. Yeah.

May Bagnell (22:27.596)
Like a like a miracle, the anxiety also dissipated, right? The balance restored and the anxiety dissipated. So anything else you wanna add to that? 'Cause I know that was my experience, but I also know that there's a perhaps a physiological reason why.

Dr. Bagnell (22:41.419)
Yeah, the vestibular system interacts with different networks of the brain. And there is actually something called an anxiety network in the brain and an emotional regulation network in your temporal lobes. Well, your vestibular system interacts with the temporal lobes very much, which the temporal lobes now also affect emotional regulation, memory, navigation, where is my body in space? Where am I? So, you know, these types of things can all be affected.

May Bagnell (22:56.258)
Hm.

May Bagnell (23:08.355)
Right.

Dr. Bagnell (23:08.619)
And we know based on studies that people who have anxiety on greater and greater scales, as measured, tend to have less stability when they're measured on a stability platform. So if your stability goes down when your anxiety goes up, right? Anxiety I get more anxious, I feel less stable. Like a lot of older people, they get anxious and they feel unstable, which drives more anxiety, which makes them more unstable.

May Bagnell (23:25.902)
Sure.

Dr. Bagnell (23:36.801)
The vestibular system may be a window in, in fact, it is a window in, to the temporal lobes, to their emotional regulation, and till they're into their improving stability. So, you know, we can we can work into many different aspects of our humanity, even our emotional regulation, by adjusting, if you will, the vestibular inputs.

May Bagnell (23:58.927)
Got it. Okay. So let's talk about what someone can do differently. I mean, obviously we we've talked about there's different ways of testing. We know that, you know, by looking at the brain and the vestibular system from a different perspective, we're gonna be able to see things differently. but one of the things that I know is that, you know, it's the goal isn't to simply suppress symptoms.

Right. I mean, I think we we already talked about like, okay, managing our condition, which is managing it through symptoms. But the goal isn't to that. The goal is to retrain the brain's response to motion. so can you talk to us a little bit about how you do that? So you've assessed a person, that's different. We've done a different assessment so that you get unique information. Now, what is it that you're doing to help retrain the brain's adept to abdept?

Dr. Bagnell (24:35.436)
Yes.

May Bagnell (24:52.896)
Adapt I can't say that. Adaptability to motion.

Dr. Bagnell (24:57.463)
Very good. Yeah. When people have dizziness, I think you mentioned this earlier, they start to avoid certain things. And that avoidance causes less ability of the brain to adapt. Now we have a range, we have a range, I'll put it like this, a range of vestibular adaptation. So when we're walking, and just look right now, I'm moving my head. When I'm walking, my head is actually bobbing very slightly. It may not be very noticeable, but if I walk faster, your head is bobbing more and your head is also going back and forth, all activating the vestibular system.

To maintain gaze so that I don't feel dizzy. Just been walking, and some people do. So the vestibular system operates at a range. And if I was running, right, to maintain my eyes being focused still on whatever I'm looking at, the ground or out in front, there's a higher range. So we have this range of operating, right? Of the vestibular system. Just like your cardiovascular system has a range when you're laying down, it's in a low range.

May Bagnell (25:47.886)
Sure. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bagnell (25:54.424)
When you're standing up, it's in a higher range, walking a little bit higher. So you have a range of operation. Well, when the vestibular system is dysfunctional for whatever reasons, the range becomes smaller. And then when you get nervous about doing things, the range gets even tighter. So when we test someone, we have to go through different stages of the range in a very controlled environment that's safe, and we can do that absolutely precisely.

May Bagnell (25:59.877)
Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bagnell (26:23.625)
Some testing that people may have had, where they get some air blown in one ear and air blown in another ear does test in the lowest possible range, right? The vestibular system. And people who have had problems may have had that test, so they'll know what I'm talking about. It's called a caloric. It used to be done with liquid, now it's done with air, and usually an ENT's office with some expensive equipment. Very good test, but it only tests the lower range. Well, we need to test higher in the range.

May Bagnell (26:50.02)
Got it.

Dr. Bagnell (26:53.111)
And that's why we have a multi-axis chair, axis AI, that we can safely harness someone in, look at their eyes with goggles, and then move them very carefully into positions right and left, and then move their head right and left in these positions at different speeds, working all the way up, so we can pinpoint where is the breakdown because the caloric might show you're okay at that slow speed.

And the reality is you don't do a lot at that slow level, that slow speed of reaction. You do it on a little bit higher. So in the natural head movement range. That's where we need to go. So this is the specificity, this is the precision that the tools and technology we have are able to allow us a window into. And more beautiful than that, when we can find it in those ranges, we can actually create rehabilitative specific protocols for that person.

for that side of the vestibular system at the right speed and the right amount of time. Isn't that remarkable? That's like going to the op ophthalmologist and they say, you need plus 2.3 on your lenses, right? I'll just use that number. People are familiar with two plus two and plus three. Exactly the right diopter. So you can see, wow, I can see perfectly clear. That's what we're doing now in dizziness and resolution by improving vestibular function.

May Bagnell (27:55.96)
Yeah. Yeah, I love that.

May Bagnell (28:16.94)
Right. So I love that. So what I hear you saying is that, and we and we've known this in functional neurology, but the nervous system changes through repetition, right, through precision and the right level of challenge. Right. The right level of challenge. And what I appreciate about your work and the work that we do for our clients is that your the protocols that you have are all meant to start where they are.

Dr. Bagnell (28:26.658)
Yes.

Dr. Bagnell (28:31.851)
That's correct.

May Bagnell (28:46.136)
Challenge them at each level and keep challenging them till we get to that to the the the highest level possible to get that benefit and that correction, right? We often talk about in our work that we start with stability, then we move into strengthening, and then we move into sustainability, right? And that really speaks to this work, right? The right level of challenge with the right repetition and the right precision.

Dr. Bagnell (28:56.727)
Right.

May Bagnell (29:14.942)
gets the result. And and and this is why in this work a lot of people, you know, get the resolution that they're after after many, many years of searching, right? And pleading for support.

Dr. Bagnell (29:29.771)
Yeah, I mean dizziness is like the warning light, right? And functional testing helps us to look under the hood. Okay, here's what's happening. And the brain can learn these wrong patterns and with the right input it can learn a better one. And that's where we're going.

May Bagnell (29:41.529)
Right, right, right. I love that. Okay. So as we wrap, because we're just getting really close to wrap up here, is there any other story that you want to leave with, like a patient account situation that you want to leave us with that as the listeners or those are watching, right, can feel a bit more connected to that story and maybe some hope.

Dr. Bagnell (29:57.26)
Yes, do

Dr. Bagnell (30:05.451)
Yes. You you reminded me of this earlier in in our our podcast. We had a client who came in, a woman in her middle age, mid fifties, late fifties, and very tall, lovely lady, and she was in the examination room when I walked in and she came in and I said, Okay, well we're gonna get started after we talked a bit because she was standing. She was standing. Usually clients will sit and then I will sit across from

I'm not gonna sit down. I can't sit down. I said, okay, so we can stand. I did her history. Okay, well, let's sit on the tip. No, no, no, I can't lay down. I can't sit down. She was so afraid of movement. And she was stiff, her neck like this. And when she showed me her neck, she it looked like so red and blotchy because she was using so much heat on her neck, her skin was getting damaged, like almost burnt, right? Because our skin thins as we get age, and then you're using this heat all the time.

May Bagnell (30:54.488)
Mm. Mm.

Dr. Bagnell (31:02.283)
The only thing because her neck was as stiff as a concrete column and she would not move. She would turn barely. Somebody's someone's watching, they can see me mimicking this a bit. and she was so afraid of everything. And this woman used to she's a nurse in her background, nursing background, and she was also an aerobics instructor for twenty years. So this is when aerobics yeah. And she I mean she was leading that in the time when aerobics was really big, right? The Reebok era and all these things. So

May Bagnell (31:22.072)
So someone who loved movement for most of her life. Yeah.

Dr. Bagnell (31:32.086)
It was really desperate for her. And we were able to evaluate her and standing up and over time get her into as we started to improve her condition with different types of a suite of therapies for the vestibular and for the cervical spine and metabolic and things of this nature, visual ocular training, we were able to get her to lay down in a lot of fear, start to recalibrate her vestibular system and

May Bagnell (31:54.552)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bagnell (31:59.938)
Well, the current model is she is she travels now back in the car with her husband, driving all over the United States. They can drive from where we are, South Florida, all the way up into the mountains and you know, Southern Amer America and the mountains in Colorado, even out west. And so she's it's completely different. She works out in the gym, she's back to doing the things that she loves to do and wants to do with her husband and her adult sons and just enjoy life without these limitations.

May Bagnell (32:28.835)
Yeah.

Dr. Bagnell (32:29.141)
And that's the story of functional neurology helping someone with a chronic severe vestibular issue that had gone unchecked and uncorrected for years, other than take your mechlasine. That's all we have for you.

May Bagnell (32:36.132)
Mm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

May Bagnell (32:43.0)
Right, right. Well, I I know that lovely lady. So if you're listening, we care for you. but thank you for that story because it is such a remarkable reminder. especially if if we've known her for quite some time now, and you know, all her everyday things that she's doing now could be kind of like, well, that's just normal. Well, it wasn't. It wasn't normal until now it's been normalized again in her life. And and so if you're listening or you're watching this and

This is your experience or someone that you love, you know, we would love to connect with you. You know, all of our new clients always start in that initial conversation with me because I do love to hear what the health journey has been, what you've already tried. Cause we almost always want to make sure that we're the right next stop for you. And usually it is, but typically

someone's been through a long health journey and they feel a little jaded or they feel a little uncertain about is anything going to help. So we want to remind you, like we always do at the end of our podcast, that you can heal and we can help. Take care.

Dr. Bagnell (33:49.259)
And we can help.