The organ at her church did it. So did highway driving, that low pressure drum she described as a "waffling" against the car. Certain sounds would leave this woman dizzy, unsteady, walking like she'd been drinking. The trail led back years, to an old concussion nobody had connected to any of it. Jaime Browning took the case, and what I want you to notice is how often his best decision was to do nothing.
Why would sound make a person dizzy?
Hearing and balance share an organ. The inner ear houses both the cochlea and the semicircular canals, and heavy sound pressure loads them together. A healthy system filters this without effort. But balance depends on several inputs at once, and the upper neck is among the most influential, feeding the brain a constant report of where the head sits. When an old concussion leaves the craniocervical junction disturbed, the brain gets two conflicting reports, and a blast of organ pipes is enough to tip the whole system into vertigo. Her dizziness came from the mismatch between the two, not from her ears or her head alone.
What does restraint have to do with treatment?
Everything, in a case like this. The instinct in every healing profession is to do more. Dr. Browning's post-adjustment assessments kept telling him her nervous system needed quiet, not input, so his care plan became long holds and hands off unless the measurements demanded otherwise. She eventually held a single correction for almost two years, and her life expanded the entire time. We've written before about why an injured upper neck should not be adjusted forcefully or frequently. Her story is the strongest version of the argument I know: most of her healing happened in the long stretches between adjustments.
About Dr. Browning
Dr. Jaime Browning, DC, FCCJP, practices at The Upstate Clinic of Specific Chiropractic in Easley, South Carolina, at (864) 855-3255. He also teaches at Sherman College of Chiropractic, which honored him as Upper Cervical Researcher of the Year.