Could Your Massage Gun Be Making You Dizzy? New Report Links Devices to Vertigo
Handheld massage guns can support working out sore muscles. However, new scientific information discovered that they may also raise an individual’s chance of creating vertigo.
Otolaryngology describes two issues of patients who set severe dizziness after using massage guns on their upper channels and lower scalps. Especially, both set a common form of dizziness named benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), which generates room-spinning dizziness.
The foremost case involved a 31-year-old female who grew vertigo 12 hours after using a massage gun on her neck and shoulders. The other patient was 48 years old and had frequent attacks of vertigo that doctors supposed was due to massage gun use. Both women’s vertigo signs enhanced after they quit using the handheld massage firearms.
The relationship is one that individuals who use massage guns should be more conscious of, said information author Ronen Nazarian, MD, chief of otology at the Center for Advanced Ear Surgery and treating physician at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
“This is something individuals should worry about,” he told Health.
Here’s what professionals had to say about massage guns
Why Might Tickle Guns Be Driving Vertigo?
Vertigo is often defined as a sense of dizziness like you’re in action when you’re not moving. This is separate from feeling lightheaded.
Vertigo “is usually defined by patients as a spinning feeling, with the room or things around them moving about,” Ilan Danan, MD, laughingstocks neurologist at the Center for Sports Neurology and Pain Medicine at the Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute, informed Health.
“BPPV is caused by a malfunctioning of the inner ear channels. It results in severe dizziness and quick involuntary actions of the eyes, known as nystagmus.
When you have BPPV, crystals in your inner ear made of calcium carbonate get dislodged, Courtney Voelker, MD, PhD, neurologist and head of the grown-up and pediatric cochlear implant schedule at the Pacific Neuroscience Institute, told Health. These dislodged amounts of calcium (also named otoliths) then swim around in the inner ear, which complicates the brain about the body’s role in space.
Yet, there are other reasons for BPPV. People can set the state by striking their head, putting their leader upside down, having a disorder, or having another disease such as numerous sclerosis, said Nazarian. Some individuals simply spontaneously create it.
How Concerned Should You Be?
Certainly, not all individuals who use massage guns go on to create vertigo; yet, Nazarian is concerned about how often he’s seeing this problem produced among patients.
BPPV is typically more typical in older grown-ups, mild paroxysmal positional dizziness who were on the more youthful flank.”
“We saw that one of the typical denominators was that they were operating a massage gun a brief time before these signs started,” he stated.
Most of these patients Nazarian visits also don’t recognize that they shouldn’t be utilizing a massage gun on their skull and neck, he counted.
“There should be adequate signs on these effects to warn about using these on the upper neck and back of the chair,” he stated. “Patients should be more familiar.”
In addition to vertigo, using a massage gun on your channel could also lead to other severe difficulties, Nazarian counted. A report issued in 2022 drafted a matter of a 27-year-old woman who grew vertebral artery dissection, a potential reason for stroke, after using a massage gun on her neck for at least three weeks.
How to Avoid Getting Vertigo from a Massage Gun?
A handheld massage gun can have a lot of force on a targeted area. It’s best to be careful about where you use it. Also, the pulse may be capable of dislodging inner ear crystals, increasing your chance of vertigo, Nazarian said.
In complement to cutting your neck and lead, it’s also most uncontroversial to bypass using massage guns on exposed locations on the body such as the eyes, groin, now over the seat, or behind the knees.
Nazarian told you it’s best to strive out an ear, nose, and throat professional fast.
Doctors use something named the Epley maneuver to assist get those inner ear crystals back into place, he said.
“In the vast bulk of people, it only takes one trick,” Voelker told. “It’s very, very rare that an individual would require surgery.”