Explainer | What is Ménière’s disease, and is there a cure? Dizziness, loss of hearing and vomiting are symptoms of ear condition that caused Cantopop star Jacky Cheung to fall on stage
- Ménière’s disease can happen to anyone – singer Jacky Cheung fell during a concert because of it – and is thought to be the result of fluid in the inner ear
- One man, who suffered his first attack in 2020, explains what happens during an attack, and how it ‘has caused anxiety and interrupted my life’
Early one December morning in 2020, Matthew Miller woke up feeling “a little weird”. Then the room started spinning, and he spent the next couple of hours vomiting into the toilet.
After two days in hospital, where the Hong Kong resident underwent a CAT scan and audiometry tests – “hearing in my left ear was reduced by 20 per cent” – Miller was diagnosed with Ménière’s disease, a rare condition, believed to be the result of a build-up of fluid in the inner ear, that can lead to dizzy spells and is associated with hearing loss.
Miller, now 53, had heard of it: his father has the disease, and though it is still little understood it does seem to run in families.
In retrospect, he had experienced mild symptoms in the year leading up to his debilitating attack.
“I felt like my ear was plugged, like it felt full, and I couldn’t hear quite right,” he says. “It came and went so I just put it down to congestion from a cold or because I had been swimming.”