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By EMILY JOSHU STERNE, US SENIOR HEALTH REPORTER
Published: 22:55 GMT, 26 February 2026 | Updated: 01:19 GMT, 27 February 2026
For nearly 20 years, Rachel Weaver's entire world was spinning.
In January 2006, the then-31-year-old had just moved to Colorado for graduate school to study writing. But on the morning of her orientation, she woke up with an intense dizziness she hadn't felt before.
She had been 'very healthy' at the time with no pre-existing conditions, so she initially assumed it was a case of nerves.
But she continued to feel unsteady throughout the day with seemingly no explanation. 'And then for 18 years, it never stopped,' Weaver, now 51 and author of the memoir, Dizzy, told the Daily Mail.
'The dizziness would change a little, but for the most part, it was just this very seasick feeling all the time, like everything was moving around me.
'I started going from doctor to doctor to doctor. No one could figure out what was wrong with me.'
Weaver estimates she saw more than 40 doctors over the next decade, undergoing countless MRI scans, blood tests and X-rays. Finally, an osteopathic doctor diagnosed her with chronic vestibular migraine, a form of migraine characterized by dizziness, loss of balance, nausea and vomiting.
Unlike the 40 million Americans with typical chronic migraine, Weaver rarely had a painful headache - her condition was instead defined by vertigo and a constant spinning sensation. Vestibular migraine affects roughly three percent of the US population, and women are at a five-fold greater risk.
Rachel Weaver suffered from chronic vestibular migraine for nearly two decades before a clinical trial changed her life
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After being diagnosed, Weaver was able to control her symptoms for the first time. She utilized a combination of Botox injections every three months, nerve blocks to stop pain signals from the brain every few weeks, rescue medications such as sumatriptan and Toradol, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and physical therapy.
But in 2022, the steady foundation Weaver had finally built crumbled as she tested positive for COVID.
'I traveled for work and and came back home with COVID,' she told the Daily Mail. 'And then everything stopped working - all my migraine meds, everything. It just went back to horrendous, debilitating, all day, every day symptoms.
EXCLUSIVE I had crippling migraines for a decade and tried every cure... finally I found one that worked
'And then I started flinging myself around the country, adding myself to wait lists at all the big migraine clinics or anybody that I felt was maybe researching things or looking at [migraine] from a different angle. I literally had tried everything at this point.'
In 2024, Weaver learned about a clinical trial in the works from Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine in Provo, Utah. The team was led by neuroscientist Dr Kyle Bills, associate dean of research at the college who started studying chronic migraine to find answers on behalf of his mother.
'For me, migraine became big because my mother had migraine, and it took a serious toll on her life,' Bills told the Daily Mail. 'I think for her, it was a mixture of not just the pain and the loss of function, but I think she experienced guilt of not being around and not being able to do some of the things that she valued.'
Previous studies have suggested chronic migraine, defined by suffering at least 15 headache days a month, are driven by a multitude of factors such as obesity, stress, hormonal changes, genetics and medication overuse, but the picture is still unclear for millions of patients.
Dr Kyle Bills, neuroscientist and associate dean of research at the Noorda College of Osteopathic Medicine, is researching the effect of glucose on chronic migraine
Bills's team decided to look at an unlikely factor: blood sugar (glucose), which rises and falls based on dietary patterns, exercise and hormones.
'So many people say, "Oh yeah, if I don't eat, I'll get a migraine." That's such a common commentary,' Bills said. 'And so as we're doing surveys and having discussions with patients, it was such a constant comment that it forced us to kind of go back as a group and go, "Wait a minute. First off, why is nobody talking about that, and why has no one explored what that probably means?'
