Condition
Vertigo and Dizziness
“Chiropractor for vertigo” is a high-intent, low-competition specialty term. Concord-area and Wilmington patients use it after a crash, a cold, or a week of looking up at a shelf. Some of that is BPPV. Some is cervical. Some is blood pressure or vestibular disease.
We take history first. Neck pain after whiplash plus dizziness is a different chart than spinning in bed that lasts 20 seconds. We will not crack through an undiagnosed stroke syndrome because someone Googled vertigo.
Pair with neck pain and whiplash when the story started on I-95. Pair with headaches when motion sensitivity rides with migraine. ENT and neurology stay in the lead when the inner ear or central cause is the finding.
The reason this page exists separately from neck pain is that the workup is genuinely different. Balance is maintained by three inputs — the inner ear, the eyes, and position sensors in the joints and muscles, of which the upper cervical spine holds the densest supply anywhere in the body. When those three disagree, the brain produces the sensation people call dizziness. Cervicogenic dizziness is what happens when the neck's contribution becomes unreliable: the joint receptors send noisy information, the eyes and inner ear disagree with it, and the result is a persistent sense of being slightly off.
That mechanism explains the pattern. It is worse when the neck is held still for a long time, because sustained positions dull the receptors further. It is worse in visually busy places such as supermarket aisles, because the eyes cannot compensate as easily. It usually improves with rest and it almost always travels with neck stiffness or headache. Patients frequently describe it as feeling fine sitting and unreliable standing, and as being able to walk normally but not to turn quickly.
Our exam runs in a deliberate order: red flags first, then inner-ear screening, then the neck. That means blood pressure sitting and standing, a look at eye movements, Dix-Hallpike positioning to check for BPPV, and only then cervical motion testing and palpation of the upper cervical joints. Doing it in the other order is how a neck gets treated for six weeks while a treatable inner-ear problem or a medication side effect goes unaddressed.
Where the finding is cervical, treatment is upper cervical mobilisation and adjusting, soft-tissue work through the suboccipital muscles, and — the part people skip — retraining the balance system so it stops relying so heavily on vision. Simple gaze-stabilisation and head-turn exercises done consistently do more for a recovering vestibular system than any hands-on technique. Most cervicogenic cases improve substantially inside six weeks when the neck is genuinely the driver.
The honest limits: Ménière's disease, vestibular neuritis, vestibular migraine, cardiac arrhythmia, orthostatic hypotension, and medication interaction all produce dizziness and none of them are chiropractic conditions. ENT, neurology, and your prescribing doctor lead those. We would rather be the practice that identified it and referred than the one that adjusted a neck for two months while the real cause carried on.
Related conditions people search
Services that often help
Doctors to start with
Patients from Bear, Glasgow, and Pike Creek typically use Newark. Brandywine Hundred, Claymont, and Hockessin use Wilmington. Capital-area patients use Camden/Dover. Smyrna covers Route 13 and Saturday mornings.
FAQ
Can a chiropractor help vertigo?
When dizziness is cervicogenic — tied to neck motion and posture — yes, after we screen for BPPV and medical causes. True inner-ear BPPV often needs canalith repositioning, which is a specific maneuver, not a generic adjustment.
When is dizziness an emergency?
Sudden severe headache, weakness, facial droop, chest pain, fainting, or “worst dizziness of my life” with neurological signs is emergency care. Do not drive to a chiropractor for that.
What is the difference between vertigo, dizziness, and lightheadedness?
They point at different systems, and the distinction changes the whole workup. Vertigo is an illusion of movement — the room spins or tilts — and usually means the inner ear or its central connections. Lightheadedness is the sense you might faint, and points at blood pressure, hydration, medication, or heart rhythm. Unsteadiness without either is often neck, vision, or balance conditioning. We ask you to describe it without using the word dizzy, because the description is diagnostic.
What does cervicogenic dizziness actually feel like?
It is a floating, off-balance, drunk-without-drinking sensation rather than true room-spinning. It tracks with neck position and neck pain, builds over the day, gets worse with sustained postures such as driving or screen work, and typically lasts minutes to hours rather than seconds. It very commonly follows a whiplash injury. If your dizziness spins violently for twenty seconds when you roll over in bed, that is a different animal and it is usually BPPV.
Can you treat BPPV?
BPPV comes from displaced crystals in the inner-ear canals and responds to specific repositioning manoeuvres such as Epley, not to spinal adjusting. We screen for it with a Dix-Hallpike test because it is common, highly treatable, and often mistaken for a neck problem. Where it is within our training and scope we perform the manoeuvre; where the presentation is atypical we refer to ENT or vestibular therapy rather than experiment.
Is neck adjusting safe if I am dizzy?
It depends entirely on why you are dizzy, which is the reason we screen before we treat rather than after. Dizziness accompanied by double vision, difficulty swallowing, slurred speech, numbness around the mouth, or unsteadiness that came on abruptly is a vascular and neurological screen, not a treatment session, and we send those on. Where the picture is a stiff, painful neck with position-dependent unsteadiness, we generally start with mobilisation and soft-tissue work rather than higher-velocity technique.