News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on To Knock an Elephant Off Balance, Bring Out a Giant Blindfold. Parent comment

Re:To Knock an Elephant Off Balance, Bring Out a Giant Blind... by capableweb on Thursday September 28, 2023 @02:49PM (#37693934)
Related, something happened with my ear supposedly as well, and I started experiencing dizzyness when turning around in the bed, and when raising myself from a lying position, even when slowly doing so.

Turns out there are "Inner Ear Crystals" that are floating around and that needs to be in the right place for you to not become dizzy. At first it sounded like new age stuff, but the medical doctor pointed out I probably had BPPV, and I started doing some exercises with body movements that are supposed to "align the crystals".

It still sounds like bullshit to me for some reason, but the exercises worked so I guess there is some truth in people needing to align the crystals in them, sometimes.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Knock an Elephant Off Balance, Bring Out a Giant Blind... by I_Am_Nous on Thursday September 28, 2023 @03:18PM (#37694346)
My wife had a similar diagnosis. Random dizziness, and the exercises helped resolve it for her as well. "Ear crystals" was certainly a fun thing to hear the first time!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Knock an Elephant Off Balance, Bring Out a Giant Blind... by penteract on Thursday September 28, 2023 @03:59PM (#37694968)
"Adventures in Human Being" by Gavin Francis has an interesting description of the development of the Epley maneuver, which wasn't invented until ~1980. It took some time to be accepted due to a slightly different prevailing theory for the cause of BPPV and "the fact that Epley had been holding vibrators to patients' heads allowed them to label him a crank".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Knock an Elephant Off Balance, Bring Out a Giant Blind... by soco on Friday September 29, 2023 @07:28AM (#37702142)
It sounds indeed like b$ if you phrase it like "aligning crystal vibrations". But he meant the otoliths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otolith
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:To Knock an Elephant Off Balance, Bring Out a Giant Blind... by capableweb on Friday September 29, 2023 @11:57AM (#37706116)
But in common parlance, people seem to refer to them as crystals (although I've never heard the word "vibrations" around it, that's definitely new age stuff). That Wikipedia article even uses the word "crystal" as well:

> Otoliths (also called statoliths) are agglutinated crystals or crystals precipitated around a nucleus, with well defined morphology and together all may be termed endolymphatic infillings

[ Parent | on HN ]