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The room spins. You grab something solid. It keeps spinning anyway. That’s vertigo.
Vertigo isn’t plain dizziness. It’s the specific feeling that you or everything around you is turning when nothing actually is. The trouble usually sits in your inner ear, not your head. Several everyday measures can calm an episode and cut how often it hits, but working out the cause is a job for a clinician, not something to guess at from home. The methods below are non-diagnostic self-help; the last section covers the signs that mean you should stop and get seen.
What causes vertigo
Vertigo is a symptom, not a disease, and a short list of inner-ear problems is behind most of it.
The most common is BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo): tiny calcium crystals come loose inside the inner ear and drift into a canal where they don’t belong, setting off short, violent spinning when the head changes position. Another familiar pattern is Meniere’s disease, where the spinning runs from minutes to hours and comes with a full or blocked feeling in one ear, ringing (tinnitus), or muffled hearing. Vestibular migraine and inner-ear infections (labyrinthitis, vestibular neuritis) account for much of the rest.
These conditions can produce very similar symptoms, and some overlap with far more serious problems, so which one you have is a call for a clinician after an examination, not something to settle from a symptom list at home. What follows are general self-help measures. For treatment aimed at a specific cause, get assessed first.
1. Try the Epley maneuver
The Epley is the standard repositioning maneuver for BPPV, the loose-crystal cause of positional vertigo. It’s a fixed sequence of head and body moves that uses gravity to roll those crystals back where they belong. Because it targets one specific cause, it works best once a clinician has confirmed that’s what you’re dealing with, so check first, especially the first time.
Sit on the edge of your bed. Turn your head 45 degrees toward the ear that triggers the spinning. Lie back quickly so your shoulders are on the mattress and your head hangs slightly off the edge, still turned. Hold for 30 seconds. Now turn your head 90 degrees to the other side without lifting it, and hold another 30 seconds. Roll onto that side until you’re looking at the floor, hold again, then sit up slowly.
It looks ridiculous and the first pass often makes you feel worse for a moment. That’s the crystals moving, not a setback. How often to repeat it is something the clinician who confirmed BPPV will set for you. Skip it if you have a neck or back problem that makes lying back and turning painful, and check with a professional first.
2. Do the Brandt-Daroff exercises
Another home exercise for positional vertigo, and a common backup when the Epley isn’t the right fit. Where the Epley is one careful sweep, Brandt-Daroff is repetition: you move into the position that sets off the spin, over and over, and for many people the reaction fades with practice. Exactly why it helps isn’t fully settled, but it’s a long-standing self-help routine.
Sit upright in the middle of a bed. Turn your head 45 degrees to one side, then lie down on the opposite side until the back of your head touches the mattress. Hold for 30 seconds, or until the spinning stops. Sit up for 30 seconds, then repeat to the other side. That’s one rep. Do five in a row, three times a day, for about two weeks after an episode.
Expect the first few reps to bring the spin on. Set up where you can’t fall, keep someone nearby the first time, and come up slowly at the end of a set. If two honest weeks change nothing, get assessed rather than pushing harder.
3. Practice vestibular rehabilitation exercises
Different goal from the two above. Instead of moving crystals, these retrain your brain to lean on your eyes and body for balance while the inner ear settles. A simple example a therapist might start you on: hold your thumb up at arm’s length, focus on it, and turn your head side to side while keeping it in focus, then up and down, slow at first and quicker as it gets easier.
Vestibular rehabilitation works best as a program built for you by a vestibular physical therapist, who matches the exercises to your problem and progresses them safely. It’s the usual route for balance that stays wobbly after the acute spinning settles. Treat the gaze-holding drill as a taste of the approach, not a substitute for that assessment.
4. Avoid sudden head movements
When you’re in a flare, speed is the enemy. Get out of bed in stages: sit on the edge, wait a beat, then stand. Turn your whole body instead of whipping your head around. Prop yourself on a couple of pillows at night so you’re not rolling flat. It feels like living in slow motion, but abrupt moves are exactly what fires off a positional spin.
5. Reduce salt intake
For some inner-ear causes of vertigo, cutting back on salt is part of standard management, because too much sodium makes the body hold fluid unevenly and the inner ear feels it. It’s a low-risk change to make anyway: the salt you sprinkle isn’t really the problem, it’s the hidden load in bread, canned soup, deli meat and restaurant food, so read labels. If your episodes come with ear fullness, ringing or hearing changes, ask a clinician whether a lower-salt diet fits your case rather than setting a target yourself.
6. Limit caffeine and alcohol
Health services commonly advise cutting down on caffeine and alcohol for recurring inner-ear vertigo. Alcohol especially can set off a spin within hours, and if dizziness after drinking is a regular thing for you, that’s a loud hint worth paying attention to. Easing off both is a sensible, low-risk step if you get repeated episodes; keep a note of whether it makes a difference and raise it with a clinician.
7. Stay hydrated
Being low on fluids can leave you lightheaded, so staying hydrated is a cheap baseline worth nailing down. Drink through the day instead of waiting until you’re thirsty. It won’t cure crystal-driven vertigo, but going short on fluids tends to make dizziness worse, so it’s an easy own-goal to avoid.
8. Use ginger
Vertigo’s worst tag-along is the nausea, and ginger is the household answer for that. The evidence is strong for settling a queasy stomach and mixed for the spinning itself, so treat it as nausea relief, not a cure. Steep a thumb-sized piece of peeled, sliced ginger in hot water for about 10 minutes and sip it slowly, or reach for ginger chews or flat ginger ale in a pinch.
9. Manage stress
Stress and anxiety don’t cause vertigo, and a spinning episode is stressful in its own right, so the two can feed each other and make a bad spell harder to ride out. You don’t need a meditation app. You need whatever actually drops your shoulders: a walk, slow breathing, putting the phone down before bed. Pick the thing that works for you, not the thing you think should.
10. Get enough sleep
Being run down makes almost everything harder to cope with, dizziness included, and it’s easier to ride out an episode when you’re rested. A solid night’s sleep won’t fix the underlying problem, but running on empty tends to make a bad spell worse. Protect your sleep the way you would for any recovery.
11. Keep your living space safe
The real danger with vertigo isn’t the spinning, it’s hitting the floor mid-spin. Clear the tripping hazards you normally weave around. Put grab bars by the toilet and in the shower. Keep a flashlight (or your phone) within reach of the bed so a night episode doesn’t happen in the dark. Non-slip mats where floors get wet. Unglamorous, but a broken wrist turns a bad week into a bad month.
When to call a professional
Most vertigo is harmless and settles on its own. Some isn’t. Call 911 right away if spinning hits alongside any of these, because together they can signal a stroke: a drooping face, weakness or numbness in an arm or leg, slurred or garbled speech, a sudden severe headache or neck pain, double vision or loss of vision, new confusion, a pounding or irregular heartbeat, chest pain, or being unable to stand even while holding onto something solid. Don’t drive yourself.
Even without those stroke signs, get emergency care for vertigo that is new, severe, and won’t stop, lasting hours to days, especially with vomiting or trouble walking. That pattern can be indistinguishable from a stroke and shouldn’t be waited out at home. The first time vertigo hits hard out of nowhere, it’s also worth being seen promptly to rule out anything serious.
Book a non-urgent appointment if your vertigo keeps coming back, comes with new hearing loss or ringing in one ear, follows a head injury, or drags on but stays mild. A clinician can work out which cause is behind it and, for BPPV, run the repositioning for you.
Vertigo FAQ
How do you get rid of vertigo fast?
For positional vertigo caused by loose inner-ear crystals, the Epley maneuver is the quickest recognized fix, and many people feel a difference after only a round or two once a clinician has confirmed that’s the cause. While you wait an acute spin out, lie still in a dark, quiet room with your eyes closed. It calms the sensation and the nausea that rides with it.
Does vertigo go away on its own?
Often, yes. Positional vertigo can settle on its own, sometimes within days and sometimes over a few weeks, and the repositioning exercises are the usual self-help for it. Vertigo that keeps returning, lasts a long time, or comes with hearing changes needs to be checked rather than waited out.
What makes vertigo worse?
Sudden head movements are the classic trigger for the positional kind. Going short on fluids or sleep tends to make any dizziness harder to handle. For recurring inner-ear vertigo, health services often flag salt, caffeine and alcohol as worth cutting back on. Stress won’t help either.
Can dehydration cause dizziness?
It can. Not drinking enough can leave you lightheaded, and low fluids tend to make dizziness worse, so steady hydration through the day is one of the simplest guards against it.
