‘Dear Marc,” writes David. “Are you the Marc Wilson who wrote the recent column about mental health for the Listener?” My spidey-sense, attuned to criticism after decades of anonymous student evaluations, suggests I may have offended a reader. That and the email subject line: “Despicable”. I respond to the leader of the Act Party [David Seymour] that, yes I am that Marc Wilson, inquiring if he’s unhappy with my reference in my August 5 column to contested 2015 reports that he told distressed folks to harden up. “Yes, and you’ve just confirmed everything I’ve suspected. Again, the subject line says it all,” he replies. No signature this time. You can’t win ‘em all.
Tim, on the other hand, writes to say he liked the column, offering a brilliant tip for brain health: standing on one foot while brushing your teeth. It sounds a small thing, particularly to 20- and 30-somethings, but pulling on a sock standing on one leg shouldn’t be taken for granted. Line up average folk aged 10, 20, 30 and so on to 80 and ask them to stand on one leg for as long as they can and it’s like watching dominoes.
“Normal” loss of balance as we age is caused by a combination of loss of strength and, without practise, a decline in how easy it is for us to automatically combine what our internal gyroscope tells us about where we are in the world and what our body has to do to stay upright. It doesn’t help that as we age there’s a small die-off of the “hair cells” that are central to our vestibular balance system.
As you sit there horrified at the thought of more Joe Biden-style tripping in your life, you’re wondering, “Is there anything we can do?” There is.
I qualify as “middle-aged”, and I’m in the normal age-related range for falling off one leg. The importance of balance, though, has been recently highlighted by the experience of my wife.
Several weeks before our planned mid-year conference trip, she suddenly experienced a dramatic case of vertigo. World-spinning, nauseating vertigo. Cue a week of trying to sit as still as possible, to not trigger the spinning and retching. Her doctor ruled out the brain cancer she hadn’t thought of until I mentioned it (fool that I am). It also ruled in a range of possibilities, including vestibular vertigo.
Vestibular vertigo can strike anyone, but is more common as we age. It has a range of possible causes, including traumatic head injury (and tumours), some medications, and also a build up of calcium in your ear tubes.
She was sent to a physio specialising in neurological problems at a sports medicine centre in Wellington, which turned out to be a brilliant consultation. She had a range of tests, including standing on wobbly surfaces wearing eye-tracking goggles, that ruled out a bunch of possibilities.
Our worry that this might be the start of something chronic was assuaged. The likely culprit was a virus that had entered through the ear, wreaking havoc as it went and interrupting our normal balance-sensemaking software. Most importantly, there was a treatment. Rather than sitting as still as possible, she was encouraged to get out and do stuff to retrain that disrupted system.
Also, a set of regular (and humorous, to me, anyway) exercises involving things like staring furiously at an “X” on a sticky label while shaking your head, and walking forwards and backwards. And falling over, at least to begin with.
If your world is spinning, and you haven’t already done so, please make an appointment with your GP. Doing some more exercise won’t hurt, either.
And maybe my friend Dave might want a check-up. Historically, he’s leaned quite far to the right.
