Photo by Marcelo Leal on Unsplash
I’ve been suffering from constant low-grade nausea. At first, I thought this was a post-heat illness. The recent heatwave hit hard, and I felt an illness coming the day it cooled. But now the symptoms have gone on for numerous days, and I’m starting to doubt my original prognosis.
The result is that it makes my life a misery for several days. I missed several events because I knew my body was not up for it, and managing my eating has been a nightmare. My solution has been to push eating whatever feels easy enough to digest. In that sense, my eating has been replaced to that of a toddler. Fish fingers and oven fries have been the easy, go-to meal.
It’s difficult to have new health issues come up that defy conventional explanation. Going to the doctor seems futile because there is little obvious that can be solved, and within a few weeks it passes anyway. But by that time, some other issue seems to arise.
One other factor has been that I’ve had a new period of intense dreaming. In Ayurveda, dreaming is a sign of processing. This has been happening in waves for the last six months. So whilst I know this is a sign of healing, it also takes out a lot physically. I often wake feeling tired with physical aches.
I remember that I had a dream where I was in my final year of university. Everything was focussed on me preparing for the year to come. I remember cleaning the lounge with my housemates and I recall psychologically gearing myself up for a year of study. When I woke up, I was confused to find myself in Brussels ten years later.
But I think the actual reason for my nausea is something else entirely. My body has been reorienting itself quite dramatically over the last few months. My pelvic tilt has improved quite substantively, even though I have not actively been working on it.
A few months ago I remember noting an improvement, but this was followed by me having dizzy episodes. I even had one moment where I was just on my computer and suddenly needed to throw up. I ended up lying in bed for the next 24 hours because my head was spinning so severely. I think the correction of standing taller actually caused a vestibular episode. My perception was thrown off between my brain’s perception and my eye’s reading of objects from this new height.
Today I recall that I noticed that my hips were naturally starting to engage more. It felt like I was holding myself up better in the glutes, and it meant I could slowly put less pressure on my lower back. It does mean that I felt more space for my spine to elongate.
So my latest hypothesis is that this shift has led to another vestibular episode, though less severe than the one in April. What supports this hypothesis is that going out for a walk does seem to make me feel sicker rather than better.
I’m aware that what I’m describing sounds a little insane. Whilst in an article such as this, I can take the time to explain my reasoning, in a casual conversation I have no such luxury. It is such an uncommon experience that it’s easier to suggest I’m imagining things. Yet there are real studies that exist around vestibular issues, and it is only through pointers from AI that I know that they even exist.
Either way, it doesn’t change the practical solution. Eventually my body will adjust, and the issue will solve itself.
In the meantime, I’ll just have to manage each day as it comes.