Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to have a headache to be having a migraine attack. For many people, dizziness is the symptom that comes first.
Have you ever walked into a grocery store and suddenly felt disoriented or unbalanced as you walked each aisle? Maybe you’ve noticed that loud environments leave you feeling mentally drained, or getting your teeth cleaned somehow triggers dizziness as well. If you’ve experienced these situations, you’re not imagining it. For many people, these seemingly ordinary activities can trigger symptoms of vestibular migraine, a neurological condition that often goes unrecognized because it doesn’t always look like a “typical” migraine. In fact, many people never experience the severe head pain that most of us associate with migraines. I know this because I was one of them.
My Symptoms Didn’t Start With a Headache
When my vestibular symptoms began in 2020, I wasn’t dealing with crushing headaches. Instead, I felt dizzy. Sometimes it felt like I was on a rocking boat. Other times it felt like the ground was dropping beneath me. There were moments when I felt disconnected from my own body or the world around me. Bright lights became overwhelming. Maintaining conversations felt exhausting. Simple errands suddenly became some of the biggest challenges of my day. For a long time, I never considered migraine as the cause because I thought migraines always involved intense head pain. They don’t. Vestibular migraine is a neurological condition that affects the brain’s processing of balance and sensory information. While many people experience headaches during migraine attacks, others experience what’s sometimes called a silent migraine, where dizziness and other neurological symptoms occur without significant head pain.
Instead, symptoms may include:
non-spinning dizziness or vertigo
feeling like you’re rocking or swaying
feeling as though you have moon shoes on
sensitivity to light
sensitivity to sound
nausea
difficulty concentrating
feeling disconnected from your surroundings
Because these symptoms don’t fit the traditional image of migraine, many people spend months, or even years, searching for answers.
Why Do Places Like Grocery Stores Trigger Symptoms?
One common theme of vestibular migraine is sensory sensitivity. Think about everything happening when you walk into a large retail store. Bright fluorescent lighting, rows and rows of visually busy shelves, people moving in every direction, shopping carts crossing your path, announcements over the loudspeaker, background music, the constant need for your eyes and brain to process movement, etc. For someone with vestibular migraine, that’s an enormous amount of information for the brain to organize all at once. The result can be dizziness, imbalance, nausea, brain fog, or the feeling that your surroundings simply don’t feel right.
The same thing can happen during:
sitting in loud restaurants
getting your hair cut
going to the dentist
attending crowded events
having long conversations where your brain is processing constant visual and auditory information.
Every Person’s Triggers Are Different
One of the most unique facts of vestibular migraine is that triggers vary from person to person. For some, it’s bright lights. For others, it’s certain foods. Stress, poor sleep, hormonal changes, weather shifts, dehydration, and sensory overload can all contribute to symptoms. Medical evaluation is an important first step, especially because dizziness has many possible causes and should be properly diagnosed by a healthcare professional. Once you understand what’s driving your symptoms, traditional treatment plans as well as lifestyle strategies and behavior change can become powerful tools for reducing their impact and providing relief.
Want to Learn More?
If you’re trying to better understand vestibular migraine and the lifestyle factors that commonly trigger symptoms, we’ve created a free guide to help you get started!
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