Jackson Has 'Floating Woman's Syndrome'
Janet Jackson's form of vertigo once challenged medicine's view of migraines.
Oct. 17, 2008— -- After two weeks of last-minute concert cancelations and rumors about her health, Janet Jackson has revealed through a publicist the mystery disease that was keeping the lifelong performer off the stage: a rare form of migraines called vestibular migraines, or migraine associated with vertigo.
"It feels so good to be back after being down just a little bit," Jackson told the crowd at Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., Wednesday.
"Janet wanted very much to resume her tour so as not to disappoint her fans, but she continued to suffer from vertigo and could not perform," said Jackson's manager, Kenneth Crear, in a statement Tuesday. Jackson's agents said she was not available for comment.
Most people know migraines come with pain and nausea, but migraine with vertigo?
Doctors say Jackson's type of migraine is well-documented, but it only affects 3 to 5 percent of the general population. Why it happens remains somewhat of mystery.
"It's a variant of migraine headaches, but the pain it not so severe," said Dr. Susan Broner, an attending physician, neurologist and headache specialist at the Headache Institute at Roosevelt Hospital in New York, N.Y.
"We don't have strict diagnosis criteria for it yet … and we don't have any hard evidence of why people experience the dizziness," she said. "But we are interested in studying this."
In the past, doctors thought dizziness was figuratively in the patient's head, usually a woman's head.
"Twenty to 30 years ago this used to be called floating women's syndrome; [doctors] used to consider it a psychiatric or neurotic syndrome," said Dr. Steven D. Rauch, a professor of otology and laryngology at Harvard Medical School and a doctor at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston.
Rauch said the symptoms of vestibular migraines may mimic the spinning in classic vertigo, or patients might just constantly feel off balance.
"Patients feel like they have no balance, or they feel like they're rocking on a boat all the time, like you're lost in space," said Rauch.
