The causes of Meniere's is yet unknown, however it is thought to be an autoimmunue problem

**I am not a physician or have any medical experience, I am just attempting to explain what Meniere's Disease is to those who do not know**

Meniere's is an inner ear disease that causes 4 main symptoms:

VERTIGO: repeated episodes of whirling vertigo lasting from seconds to hours. Violent spinning, whirling, and falling associated with nausea and vomiting.

TINNITUS: ringing in the ear, buzzing or roaring noises in the ear.

FEELING OF FULLNESS: sensations of pressure and fullness in the ear or head

HEARING LOSS: There is associated sensorineural hearing loss that may fluctuate.

Although there are the 4 symptoms, the vertigo is by far the worst to live with. A person who has Meniere's can be doing nothing and a spinning attack will just happen.
This is what a vertigo attack feels like for me:
          I will be walking, or sitting or just laying down and I will get a strange sensation in my head. It is very hard to explain, it feels like a pressure build-up (like a balloon filling with air). Then, my world will start to tilt and sway. Sometimes the ground feels like it is dropping out from under my feet.  Next, my world starts to slowly spin, the spinning gains speed until it is going too fast to see anything. (What is happening is called Nystagmus, this is a jerking of the eyes. My eyes will drift to the right and jerk back to the center. This jerking starts slowly and gets faster and faster, thus, causing my world to spin totally out of control). As this is happening, my whole body will tense up, I will feel extremely nauseated and I start to shake and sweat. I tend to curl up into a fetal position, and hold my head. During an especially bad attack, my head gets so full of pressure I tend to hold my head to try to relieve the pressure.  These attacks last from a couple minutes to a couple hours for me. After an attack of vertigo, I need to lay down or sleep for a couple hours because I am extremely exhausted and nauseated.  I am lucky in that I do not vomit during these attacks.
    During good times I have about 1-2 attacks of vertigo a week. At other times I have 1-4 a day.
          Since my VNS surgery Dec. 16th, I no longer have these attacks.
 

Another Type of attack I get:I feel a strange feeling, like gravity is pulling me down to the ground. I will slowly loose all sense of balance, to the point I can't even lift my head. From onset to complete loss takes between 10 minutes to an hour. As I feel it coming on, I gather up what I need (meds, water, etc) and get to bed. I will have no balance on average 3 days, during this time all I can really do is sleep, and I am constantly nauseated with these attacks. It takes me about a week to feel back to normal.  These happen about once every 2 months.
No longer have these attacks

Still another type of attack These started Feb.6, 99....  I will get an extremely loud buzz in my right ear (a low tone wooo sound) and my hearing will drop to almost nothing. These last 1-4hrs. I am having these daily now.

I no longer have these kind.  It just happened for a couple month after my VNS.  My Tinnitus does go from soft to loud, but its a shhhhh sound.

The kind of attacks I now get: (4-11-01)   A few times a month I will have a vertigo attack, but since they are coming from my right ear now, they are internal (as opposed to extrenal the way I had them before), I have no balance and still feel all the symtoms I discribed in the first type, except my eyes no longer cause the world to spin around me.  I find these attacks MUCH easier to handle!  I usually just turn on the TV and watch it until the spell passes.

Attacks of vertigo may recur at irregular intervals and the individual my be free of symptoms for days to years at a time. The cause of Meniere's is unknown and the instances of the symptoms are unpredictable. The vertigo occurs most times with little or no warning.

Below is an example of a normal ear and a Meniere's ear:

When the Labyrinth becomes too full with Endolymphmatic Fluid, it sets a person into a spin attack

Cross section.