Old Zhang suddenly experienced severe dizziness when turning over at night today, spinning around and afraid to open her eyes, accompanied by malignant, vomiting, slightly improved after a few moments of rest, but sitting up and lying down in the process will have a short period of dizziness. Her partner thought that this must be a cervical spine attack and quickly accompanied her to the hospital. The doctor diagnosed her with “benign paroxysmal positional vertigo” – a strange term that she had never heard of before. Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, as the name implies, means that the disease is curable; paroxysmal means that the disease occurs repeatedly and each attack is brief, usually lasting no more than a minute, rather than persistent; positional means that it occurs mostly when changing head position, such as when lying down in bed or turning over in bed, or when bending or tilting the head, such as when going to the barber store to wash the hair; vertigo Vertigo is a very intense dizziness, accompanied by a sensation of spinning or shaking, and often accompanied by nausea, vomiting and other symptoms of plant nervous disorders. How does benign paroxysmal positional vertigo occur? In the human ear, there is an important structure that regulates the balance of the human body, consisting of an ellipsoidal sac, a balloon and three perpendicular semicircular canals. It contains hair cells that sense changes in the human center of gravity and head position and calcium carbonate crystals, the latter of which resembles a stone, hence the name otolith. The cause of benign episodic positional vertigo has not been fully elucidated, but most scholars believe that it is related to otolith dislodgement. Head trauma or aging may cause otoliths to be dislodged into the semicircular canal, and prolonged postural fixation may also induce abnormal otolith deposition. When the head position changes, the otoliths rotate in the semicircular canal due to gravity and overstimulate the receptors in it, causing severe vertigo. It is like a ball maze in the hands of a child, in which the balls swim in a disorderly manner, causing a loss of balance. The doctor’s treatment is to restore the balance by turning the balls that are rolling in the labyrinth tract back to their original position through manipulation. Research has confirmed that benign paroxysmal positional vertigo is the primary cause of dizziness attacks, however, due to the lack of knowledge about this disease, patients are often misdiagnosed as cervical spondylosis, Ménière’s disease or cerebral insufficiency of blood supply, and they do not improve even after applying various medications, physical therapy or even cervical spine surgery, causing great inconvenience to their lives. In fact, in most of the cases, this disease can be relieved by repositioning the patient’s head sequentially to direct the otolith in the semicircular canal into the ellipsoidal sac so that it cannot cause vertigo. Therefore, once a patient has severe vertigo, he or she should visit an experienced doctor for a clear diagnosis and can apply the appropriate treatment depending on the location of the dislodged otolith to bring early relief of the symptoms.