3PD or PPPD stands for “Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness.” This is a relatively new diagnosis that used to be called chronic subjective dizziness or psychogenic dizziness. Whereas now PPD or 3PD, Persistent Postural-Perceptual Dizziness is referring to a cohort of people who have some kind of anatomical physical experience with vertigo and dizziness, which could be benign paroxysmal positional dizziness to start with. So they have the dislodged calcium particles moving around one ear, they get true spinning visual vertigo. When that problem resolves, they actually don’t return to normal. It’s like they remain with his base level background fuzzy dizziness most of the time, if not all the time. They could also have a sinus infection or an ear infection or some kind of labyrinthitis, neuronitis or classic infection in one ear, a true anatomical event or physical issue.
But again, within that six-week period where the physical stuff resolves, there’s this lingering dizziness. And the question is, why do some people return to normal, but other people get this chronic persistent dizziness that can completely ruin their lives? For PPPD sufferers, they may feel like they’re going crazy, there’s this background level of dizziness and distortion that they find very difficult to explain. They probably don’t know how to have a language for it. And it has started with some kind of event, but they’ve never returned to normal. There’s just been this lingering, “I’m not quite right anymore. Why am I like this?”
I do a lot of work with these people and I want to let you know these symptoms are reversible. PPPD is not a death sentence; it is possible to heal and recover from it fully. And the process to do that is using neuroplasticity, because what’s happened is you’ve had the labyrinthitis or the BPPV or some event or unknown trigger. You might have no idea what the trigger is, and that’s fine. And that’s actually adjusted how your balance information is traveling between your ears, eyes, body, and brain. So the templates of balance have shifted and they haven’t returned back to normal. They’ve remained in this distorted dizzy space. The neural pathways and neural maps are simply confused, and it’s like they’ve rerouted in an unhelpful way so you don’t feel quite right.
Using neuroplasticity, you can actually reset and reestablish normal, steady, centered, peaceful, calm, balanced pathways, you can change how your ears, eyes, body, and brain are talking to each other, you can remap it, you can redesign it. This is all the art of neuroplasticity. It’s a process of self-study. I’ve written a book on it. My book is called Rock Steady and will give you more information. There’s also a Rock Steady online program for people who really want to dive in and get all the skills and tools to support their healing process, to overcome PPPD altogether.
