Coconino News

Olympic gold medal winning skeleton racer Lizzy Yarnold remembers coming face to face with one of her toughest challenges in 2018.

Great Britain’s most successful winter Olympian and top skeleton racer in the history of the Games, Yarnold was nearly sidelined in 2018 when the recurring infection and inner ear problem known as Eustachian tube dysfunction she’s long suffered from again raised its head.

"Eustachian tube dysfunction is what happens when the Eustachian tube that connects the back of the throat to the middle ear space doesn't work properly," said Dr. Monty Trimble of Dallas Breathe Free Sinus & Allergy Centers.

According to the TheSun, the 2014 gold-medal winner stood in third place at the PyeongChang Games of 2018 when she started to experience sinus problems and suffer with breathing in temperatures that became as cold as -8C. Experts later determined the issues that caused her to vertigo and sinus headaches without congestion were caused by a vestibular disorder affecting the inner ear.

For Yarnold, who began competing professionally in 2010, the trouble at PyeongChang began with a chest infection. NHS Inform adds vestibular disorders affecting the inner ear are sometimes referred to as Labrynthitis, which is caused by “inflammation of part of the inner ear known as the labyrinth. The inflammation comes from an infection, usually bacterial or in some cases viral.”

While the Mayo Clinic reports most bacterial infections, which more often than not start as a common cold, typically clear up in less than two weeks, over the years Yarnold can recall turning to her own home remedies for the sinus headaches and sinus allergies that became far too common.

With acute sinusitis also causing the spaces inside your nose (sinuses) to become inflamed and swollen, interfering with drainage and allowing mucus to build, medication options include benzodiazepine, which reduces activity inside your central nervous system, antiemetics, used to treat the symptoms of vertigo and dizziness, and corticosteroids, which works to reduce inflammation, and antibiotics, which focuses on bacterial infections.