The Story of How My Dizziness and Headaches Turned Out to Be About Sleep

06/08/2026 Blog

This time I want to write about something that isn’t directly related to work—though it happened precisely because I was working. As I’ll explain below, I assume quite a few people have experienced something similar, so I hope this is useful to someone.

Symptom Onset

I first started feeling unwell on June 26th. That morning, I was putting on makeup in front of the mirror when a sudden wave of dizziness hit me so hard I couldn’t stay standing. I collapsed onto the bed, and before long an intense wave of nausea came over me—I ended up bringing up everything I’d eaten for breakfast. Still, it was a Friday, and in California it was still Thursday. There were things with deadlines I wanted to get at least partway through, so even though I had no idea whether I’d get better or worse, I set out for the office anyway. I felt too nauseated to risk a taxi, so I took the train instead. Even at Ueno Station I was dizzy enough that I had to climb the stairs clutching the handrail, but luckily I managed to get a seat on the Ginza Line and made it to the office. Looking at my computer screen was rough, but I got through the work I needed to do.

Low Pressure, Typhoons, and an Earthquake

Back in May, when I was in LA, I’d been living like a non-stop zombie—not enough time for lunch on weekdays because of US-related work, then Japan work in the evenings, and weekends packed with consultations and Dodgers games. I’d had no days off before or after that trip either, so I already suspected I’d end up feeling unwell before long. My body has always been oddly predictive: I get migraines from low pressure systems, and I feel nauseated before earthquakes, like a catfish sensing a coming quake. Before both the Kansai and Tohoku earthquakes, my body had already started acting strange in advance. So I figured the dizziness and headaches on the 26th were caused by two typhoons—both essentially large low-pressure systems—plus an earthquake that hit that night. I assumed that once the rainy season, the typhoons, and the earthquake activity had all passed, I’d naturally feel better. I didn’t bother reconsidering my daily habits, and about a month went by like that.

Recurrence and Self-Diagnosis

Then, on the morning of July 21st—well after the rainy season should have ended—the dizziness and headaches came back. The same thing happened again on Friday, July 24th. If the cause wasn’t low pressure or earthquakes, the only explanation left was something wrong in my own body. Thinking back, I’d also had a dizzy spell on May 26th. If the dizziness kept recurring around the same time each month, it probably wasn’t a sign of something wrong with my brain or blood vessels.

Still, I couldn’t let the dizziness continue, so I went to an internal medicine clinic in Ginza with a dedicated “dizziness clinic.” They gave me medication to help with the dizziness and prevent migraines, along with a referral letter asking me to get an MRI and bring back the results. The problem is, I’m claustrophobic, so I can’t handle the kind of MRI where you’re pushed headfirst into the machine. On top of that, the migraine prevention medication listed “possible dizziness” as a side effect—which felt completely counterproductive—so both the medication and the referral letter are still sitting untouched in a drawer.

Inner Ear Trouble and Autonomic Nervous System Disorder

As I turned the possible causes over in my head, I suddenly remembered an ear problem I’d had over twenty years ago. Back when I was living in New York and studying, there was constant noise around me—dripping water sounds from the apartment above, singing and footsteps from parties upstairs, samba music and shouting drifting in from outside. To drown it all out, I kept a circulator fan running nonstop. Eventually, I ended up with a ringing in my head that wouldn’t go away. I suspect the cause was some combination of inner ear trouble and autonomic nervous system dysfunction—my inner ear has never been particularly strong, something I apparently inherited from my father. The ringing back then never stopped, twenty-four hours a day, which was obviously annoying, but I eventually got used to it. I figured going to a doctor wouldn’t fix it anyway, so I just left it alone, and it disappeared after about six months. I’d completely forgotten about it until now.

Alcohol, Sleep Aids, and Rain Sounds as Background Noise

More than twenty years later, here I was again with my inner ear and autonomic nervous system out of balance. Trying to figure out what was behind the dizziness and the headaches—the kind that feel like someone’s wringing out a towel in your skull—it hit me: alcohol combined with sleep medication. To deal with stress-related insomnia, I’d been taking melatonin, and on top of that, drinking a small cup of strong liqueur (around 40% alcohol) as a nightcap every night, even on days I’d already had a drink. If that still wasn’t enough to fall asleep, I’d take a sleep aid on top of it all. And to make matters worse, I’d been playing rain sounds on YouTube right next to my ear all night, every night, for about a year. Given that I already knew my inner ear wasn’t particularly resilient, it’s no wonder my autonomic nervous system eventually gave out too. Looking back, I couldn’t help but think: what on earth was I doing to myself?

Kampo: Treating the Symptoms and My Underlying Constitution

If this was related to my autonomic nervous system, I figured Eastern medicine might suit my body better than Western medicine—I’d had success before using Kampo (traditional Chinese herbal medicine) and dietary changes to cure a bad case of eczema. While searching online, I discovered, quite by coincidence, that a doctor I’d seen before, Dr. Ineki—someone who always listened carefully and gave precise advice along with Kampo prescriptions—was now at Shinjuku Tsurukame Clinic. I managed to get an appointment for the very next day and headed to Shinjuku. This was actually a clinic a friend had recommended to me before, since they offer health checkups via endoscope rather than barium, which is useful if barium doesn’t agree with you. I explained to the doctor: “I think the cause is probably a combination of taking melatonin and sleep aids together, plus listening to rain sounds all night, which seems to have pushed my inner ear over the edge—but if I stop all of those, I don’t know what to do about the insomnia.” His response was blunt: autonomic nervous system issues and dizziness could be treated, but Kampo doesn’t work on people who are using sleep medication. So the insomnia—the root cause of everything—was something I’d have to handle on my own.

Once I started the Kampo treatment and cut out both the alcohol and the sleep aids, the dizziness disappeared within about a week. As for the insomnia, once I started stretching before bed and changing my breathing to help myself fall asleep naturally, I found I could actually sleep without much struggle. It made me wonder what all those insomnia remedies I’d relied on before had even been for.

Finding the Right Pillow

With the dizziness gone, I was relieved—but the headaches didn’t let up. Even while taking the Kampo medicine, I’d wake up in the middle of the night with headaches so painful I’d take Bufferin just to cope, which then gave me a stomachache instead. I’d had headaches back when I was drinking and taking melatonin too, but I’d chalked it up to the alcohol and never thought much of it. Then one day, looking at my pillow, it occurred to me: could this be the pillow’s fault? I’d had a custom Tempur pillow made to fit my body more than twenty years ago, and I’d been using the same one ever since—it was, by any measure, completely worn out.

That weekend I went to a custom pillow (and mattress) shop at Takashimaya, tried out a few options, and bought the one that felt like the best fit—one with a hollow shaped to cradle my head. It cost about 30,000 yen, which stung a little, but there wasn’t much choice. I slept on it that night and immediately knew: the flattened-out old pillow really had been the problem. From that day on, the headaches I used to wake up with completely disappeared.

Dizziness and Headaches Aren’t Some Rare Condition

When I mentioned to people around me that I’d been struggling with dizziness and couldn’t focus on work, I was surprised at how many said, “Me too” or “So have I.” One was a chiropractor who told me he’d had frequent dizzy spells when he was younger, which turned out to be caused by tension in his neck and shoulder muscles. Now, whenever it flares up, he uses a device his father (also a practitioner) bought for him—apparently too strong for regular patients—to work out the tension himself. He also mentioned that plenty of patients come to him as a last resort after being told by other clinics that the cause is probably psychological and that they should see a psychosomatic medicine specialist, only to find relief once their muscles are properly worked on.

Another person, a junior colleague who’s also a certified administrative scrivener (gyoseishoshi), told me that medication from an ENT doctor didn’t help her dizziness at all, but medication targeting her autonomic nervous system did.

The fact that clinics specializing in dizziness even exist made me realize just how much of a modern-day condition this really is. Rather than assuming dizziness always equals stress equals a trip to psychosomatic medicine, I’d recommend thinking through what might actually be causing it and choosing a specialist accordingly.

A Question of Age

People often tell me I work too much—that I’m not young anymore and should really slow down and take it easier. I know I’m not young, and I’m well aware I can’t push myself the way I used to, even if I still have enough stamina to keep going non-stop. That said, compared to my history of stress-related health problems—a duodenal ulcer in my mid-twenties, insomnia, TMJ, recurring eczema, and shingles in my thirties—what I’m dealing with now is honestly still fairly mild. Stress tends to show up wherever you’re weakest, so I think the key is to stay aware of that and find a balance between working and taking time to enjoy life.

Summary

I know this might sound a bit dramatic, but during the period when I was wearing my body down with a blend of alcohol and sleep medication to fend off insomnia, I honestly did have a nagging sense that something was off, a feeling of “this can’t go on.” In the end, though, things didn’t play out so conveniently as simply dropping dead—instead, my body made its complaints known through dizziness and headaches. On top of all that, I was also dealing with shingles and a sore throat around the same time, and I was pulling out every medication I had at home just to keep the symptoms under control. I suppose that’s what it looks like when your immune system and resistance are running on empty. I’m in the middle of a bit of a detox now, and slowly getting back to normal, but the root cause—running the LA and Tokyo offices single-handedly—is something I’m nearing my limit on. I really do need to figure something out.

I hope everyone else out there will be a little kinder to their bodies when it comes to work, too.