I have Meniere's Disease, diagnosed by Dr. F. Owen Black, perhaps the single foremost diagnostician of inner ear disorders (i.e., I really DO have Meniere's). Everyone with Meniere's has something that triggers bad days; fixing that can't cure the disease but can make it possible to live with it. Due to a combination of bad genes and a ruptured appendix at age 8, I've always had abnormally low hormone levels. Meniere's was kept at bay until I quit taking hormones in my mid-40s because my doc considered me "too old." I began to have ever-increasingly serious crises every month, always within a day of the onset of a period, so my trigger was pretty obvious. However, I lived through four years of hell while my doc and I sought a safe combination of replacement hormones. Once we learned what it is (2.5 times as much progesterone as estrogen), I quit having crises 2-3 times a week, 12-15 hours each time. It WAS a great weight loss program, thanks to the many hours of vomiting, but I'll pass a opportunity to repeat the experience!

Over two years, I went bilateral and was functionally deaf for just a year, with increasing crises until they were almost every day. Once I finally found a doc willing to prescribe hormones, the hearing I'd lost returned to the level where it had been, and I quit having crises. Then I scheduled a series of visits to a vestibular therapist to improve balance, which had been further damaged. I'm back on track now, gradually reducing the very high doses of hormones, but I won't make the mistake of cutting back as far as did during my 50s and 60s--I really believe that I went bilateral because I'd cut back way too far on the hormones.

There's a very high percentage of people with inner ear disease, esp. Meniere's, who are post menopausal women. One study has been done in China that proved that there's a link, but most docs still stick to the tried and true (but very often ineffective) prescription to avoid salt. While it's good for everyone to avoid excessive salt, it's not healthy to live with a severely restricted diet: the first time you go out in public and eat normal food, you're likely to have a big problem (or bigger one, assuming the salt restriction doesn't "cure" the damned disease).