On a short flight from Cleveland to Denver a few weeks back, I began to develop increasing headaches. Then, nausea followed by mild dizziness.
Headaches are extremely unusual for me now days so I was wondering if I was getting sick. But I didn’t really feel like I had the flu.
This was after waking up from my usual “taking off nap”.
I quickly began to practice some of the deep breathing exercises I teach in my migraine and headache program. I started feeling better.
What I realized, however, was that the air was unusually stuffy, even for a packed airplane. And I was sitting in the front where the air is usually better than in the back.
Alas, the captain had for some reason shut off most of the airflow in the plane. I guess he did that to save energy or something.
I looked around me and saw that a lot of the people were also kind of drained looking. I bet they had the same headache as I did.
Out of curiosity, I pulled out my small body oxygen meter and put it on my finger. As I expected, my oxygen level was unusually low.
So I called the flight attendant and asked her to have the captain turn the air back on. She gave me some “flim-flam” but eventually the air was placed back on again.
As if a switch had been flipped, everyone began to smile and talk again. My nausea and dizziness was almost immediately gone and my headache was gone in three minutes.
I inhaled the semi-fresh air and thought to myself, “yet another example that my migraine/headache program as well as my vertigo/dizziness program are based on solid ground.”
Lack of oxygen immediately causes headaches, nausea and dizziness.
This was only for a few minutes. Think about the consequences if the oxygen deprivation had remained for hours, days and years.
Millions of people are not taking in enough oxygen on a daily basis causing chronic vertigo and dizziness, headaches and migraine and probably most serious in the long run: dementia-associated illnesses such as Alzheimer’s.
I’ve written a lot about this. Depending on your interest, check out our guides on Vertigo , Headaches and Dementia to learn more.
