Vertigo. How do you cure it? For a certain type, curing it can be as straightforward as moving your head in a specific way. Now, thanks to YouTube, more people are doing it. If you suffer from benigh paroxysmal positional vertigo, it's because of the otoliths (small calcium crystals in your ear) have moved to the wrong area, and they're horribly distorting your perceptions of motion. Shaking the water out of your ear can knock them back into the right place.

The Epley maneuver consists of a specific set of ways to manipulate your head, to guide the otoliths back to their home. By tilting your head in the prescribed way, the crystals should return to where they belong.



There are video guides that show the techniques to do this and they've sprung up on YouTube. Check out the one above. A new study in Neurology says that these videos were generally accurate, and just five videos accounted for some 85% of the hits on the topic.

"It was good to see that the video with the most hits was the one developed by the American Academy of Neurology when it published its guideline recommending the use of the Epley maneuver in 2008 and then posted on YouTube by a lay person," study author Kevin A. Kerber, MD said. "But it was also good that the majority of the videos demonstrated the maneuver accurately."

The study also points out that health professionals are using these YouTube videos to educate patients, and sufferers are using it on themselves.