When my hearing loss first got diagnosed 20 years ago the ENT basically called it "idiopathic hearing loss", prescribed a diuretic, said no salt and sent me on my way. Twenty years later and I've gone on prednisone, diuretics, steroids, been told I have Eustacion tube disorder, meniers and the idopatic hearing loss but.... what is it really? In the end apparently it's an inner ear disorder that seems to affect people in different ways (as I'm reading here on this forum), some more severely than others. Do you have to have the severe vertigo for it to be "meniers"? I didn't get the vertigo until recently (I just had the periodic hearing loss). So did I not have meniers before and now do?
On my first camping trip as a Boy Scout, I was told to go and ask people if I could borrow a "left handed Windshifter". It turned out to be a prank that everyone at the camp knew. Each person that I asked would send me to another person ("I think Bob over there has one") until I gave up. When I informed my Scoutmaster that I couldn't find one, he let me in on the secret - that it didn't exist. I suppose that that's not the worst thing in the world that a Scoutmaster could have done to me. Anyhoo, I think Ménière's IS a catch all. Ménière's, like the left handed Windshifter, gives your "second opinion" doctor a hidden message - "Don't waste your time with this one". They'll put you in the booth, test your hearing, then recommend the usual treatments. Sorry if this comes off as negative thinking.
Ha, I was sent off with a pot of water with no top to get 'a pot of steam'. "The steam is gone. Go get more!" Then of course there was the 'snipe' hunt where we went around the campground with a paper bag held open near the ground.....
It is a catch-all in so far as it catches all possible causes. "Ménière’s" is a word used define the following combination of symptoms—vertigo, tinnitus, fluctuating hearing loss, & aural fullness. Additional symptoms may include hyperacusis, drop attacks, mal de debarquement, & disequilibrium to name only four. Generally speaking, however, one does not require the latter symptoms to be diagnosed with Ménière’s. To the best of my knowledge, what "Ménière’s" isn't is a word used to define the cause of said combination of symptoms, as a possible single cause remains disputed, & said combination of symptoms may be the result of a number of different causes subject to the individual. To the best of my knowledge, yes, vertigo, whether severe or no—see distinction separating dizziness from vertigo—must be present for a Ménière’s diagnosis. Correction/s are, of course, always welcome if I'm at all confused on the subject.
My feeling about the Meniere is that of the camp example you explained above. They look at you that you have symptoms, they discard you with an MRI that is not of something that they do know how to detect or cure and they tell you "Meniere, learn to live dizzy." And all the doctors with whom I have spoken, none have wanted to stop to read the study of antivirals here or the theory that Meniere is caused by multiple factors that are different for each patient. For me it was exasperating to see that I really don't really care enough for any doctor to read that information about a disease that they themselves "only know they know nothing about." I can understand that if they find diabetes, chickenpox or cancer, do not read studies or clinical trials that I show them, they are diseases that they know causes them, they can detect them, see or do a biopsy, etc. But in the case of Meniere they ask you to live with a disease that they do not know causes it, an invisible cause. If they do not know what causes it, how can they be sure that there is no cure? That just sounds absurd that if you treat allergies, thyroid, teeth, etc. you get better from an ear disease. And there is no clinical trial that proves this, but there are cases of people with Meniere who were cured when other different diseases were cured, in this forum we have people who were cured or improved taking antivirals, others taking vitamin B, others adjusting their cervicals, others treating the intestine and teeth, I myself have read a medical report of a 14-year-old boy with Meniere's symptoms that he cured because he was intolerant to gluten, etc. Everything indicates that the cause is different and it is possible that there are causes that do not have treatment to date or even unknown, but everything indicates that many could improve if the disease was focused on finding other health problems in your body and fixing them. This week I read two different medical studies, one said it believed that 1/3 of Menieres could be caused by infections and dental problems, the other said that 1/3 could be caused by autoimmune problems. That is, about 2/3 of Menieres perhaps could be cured by treating problems that are well known to current medicine. Probably more if we add here the cases of food allergies, fungi, viral, cervical, gluten, etc. It would not surprise me that 80-90% could be cured if current medicine does not focus on this disease as a problem only of the ear but in a global way between several specialists who examine each one in their specialty that everything is fine and if it is not, correct it.