For Carl Cordozo, retirement doesn’t mean sitting idle. The 71-year-old Egg Harbor Township native leads an active life that includes traveling with his wife and exercising daily.

But in the summer of 2009, Cordozo began experiencing intense dizzy spells.

“I would bend down to do something and get dizzy,” Cordozo says. “I would start walking and suddenly I’d be out of control.”

Cordozo sought answers to his problem at The Balance Center at Shore Memorial Hospital, where skilled technicians use a series of tests to diagnose balance or dizziness disorders.

“Often people will take medications for dizziness, but they just mask the symptoms,” says Jennifer Pesce, director of rehabilitation at Shore Memorial. “We get to the origin of the problem.”

Cordozo was diagnosed with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), a condition caused by a buildup of crystals of calcium carbonate in the inner ear.

“The key was to get him in positions so that those crystals would dissolve,” Pesce says. “We taught him positioning techniques he could do at home to get those crystals to fl oat back where they needed to be.”

Today, Cordozo is able to control his condition and has gotten back into his daily workout routine.

“After I finished, I felt a lot better,” Cordozo says. “They helped me quite a bit.”