What are the possible causes of dizziness? How can dizziness be treated? Discover the various reasons behind feeling dizzy and the effective remedies to address the issue.

Defining Dizziness: What Does It Feel Like?

Dizziness is a broad term that describes a range of sensations, from feeling lightheaded or off-balance to a spinning or spinning sensation known as vertigo. Dizziness can be a symptom of an underlying health condition, and it’s important to understand the different types of dizziness and their potential causes.

Common Causes of Dizziness

Many factors can contribute to dizziness, including issues with the inner ear, problems with blood flow, certain medications, and dehydration. Some of the most common causes of dizziness include:

1. Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV)

BPPV is a common type of vertigo caused by tiny calcium crystals that become dislodged in the inner ear, leading to a spinning sensation when the head is moved. It’s often triggered by changes in head position, such as rolling over in bed or looking up.

2. Vestibular Disorders

Conditions affecting the vestibular system, which controls balance and spatial orientation, can cause dizziness. Examples include vestibular neuritis (inflammation of the vestibular nerve) and Ménière’s disease (excess fluid buildup in the inner ear).

3. Cardiovascular Issues

Problems with blood flow, such as low blood pressure, heart disease, or an irregular heartbeat, can reduce blood and oxygen supply to the brain, leading to dizziness or lightheadedness.

4. Medication Side Effects

Certain medications, including antibiotics, antidepressants, and blood pressure drugs, can list dizziness as a potential side effect.

5. Dehydration and Low Blood Sugar

Inadequate fluid intake or low blood sugar levels can cause dizziness and lightheadedness, especially in older adults.

Diagnosing the Cause of Dizziness

To determine the underlying cause of dizziness, your healthcare provider will likely ask about your symptoms, medical history, and any medications you’re taking. They may also perform a physical examination, order diagnostic tests, or refer you to a specialist, such as an ear, nose, and throat (ENT) doctor or a neurologist.

Treating Dizziness

The treatment for dizziness will depend on the underlying cause. Some common treatments include:

1. Medication

Your doctor may prescribe medications to help manage the symptoms of dizziness, such as anti-nausea drugs, vestibular suppressants, or blood pressure medications.

2. Physical Therapy

Exercises and maneuvers, such as the Epley maneuver for BPPV, can help reposition the inner ear crystals and alleviate dizziness.

3. Lifestyle Changes

Drinking enough fluids, managing chronic conditions, and avoiding sudden changes in head position can help prevent or reduce episodes of dizziness.

When to Seek Medical Attention

It’s important to seek medical attention if you experience sudden, severe dizziness, especially if it’s accompanied by other concerning symptoms like chest pain, headache, or difficulty walking. Dizziness can be a sign of a more serious underlying condition and should not be ignored.

Preventing and Managing Dizziness

While some causes of dizziness may be unavoidable, there are steps you can take to help prevent and manage episodes of dizziness:

1. Stay Hydrated

Drink plenty of water throughout the day to maintain proper fluid levels and prevent dehydration-related dizziness.

2. Avoid Sudden Movements

Take it slow when changing positions, such as sitting up or standing up, to allow your body to adjust and prevent sudden drops in blood pressure.

3. Review Medications

Talk to your healthcare provider about any medications you’re taking that may be contributing to your dizziness, and explore alternative options if necessary.

4. Manage Chronic Conditions

Properly managing underlying health issues, such as heart disease or diabetes, can help reduce the risk of dizziness.

Dizziness can be a frustrating and sometimes debilitating symptom, but understanding the potential causes and seeking appropriate medical care can help you find relief and prevent more serious complications. By working closely with your healthcare provider, you can develop an effective plan to manage your dizziness and improve your overall well-being.

Why Am I Dizzy? 7 Possible Causes of Dizziness and How To Treat It

Written by Stephanie Langmaid

• Is It Vertigo?
• Is It an Infection?
• Is It Meniere’s Disease?
• Is It Your Circulation?
• Is It Your Medication?
• Is It Dehydration?
• Is It Low Blood Sugar?
• Is It Something Else?
• More

Many parts of your body — including your eyes, brain, inner ear, and nerves in your feet and spine — work together to keep you balanced. When a part of that system is off, you can feel dizzy. It can be a sign of something serious, and it can be dangerous if it makes you fall.

Your doctor will look at all your symptoms and overall health to figure out what’s going on and how to treat it.

Get medical attention immediately if you’re dizzy and you faint, fall, or can’t walk or have any of the following:

• Chest pain
• Different or really bad headache
• Head injury
• High fever
• Irregular heart rate
• Seizures
• Shortness of breath
• Stiff neck
• Sudden change in speech, vision, or hearing
• Vomiting
• Weakness or numbness in your face
• Weakness in your leg or arm

Does it feel like you’re spinning or the room is moving around you? That’s a classic sign of a particular type of dizziness called vertigo. It’s more than feeling off-kilter and usually gets worse when you move your head. This is a symptom that there is an issue in the inner ear or part of the brainstem governing balance. The most common kind is benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV.

Your inner ear is a complicated system of canals filled with fluid. These let your brain know how your head is moving. With BPPV, tiny bits of calcium in part of your inner ear get loose and move to places they don’t belong. The system doesn’t work the way it should and sends your brain the wrong signals.

It’s often caused by the natural breakdown of cells that happens with age. A head injury can cause it, too.

You’ll feel it briefly when you tilt or turn your head, and especially when you roll over in bed or sit up. BPPV isn’t serious and usually goes away on its own. If not — or you’d like to help it along — it can be treated with special head exercises (“particle repositioning exercises”) called the Epley maneuver to get the pieces of calcium back in place. Most people feel better after one to three treatments.

There are other causes of vertigo both in and outside the brain. You can have Meniere disease (described below), labyrinthitis (described below), a tumor called an acoustic neuroma or side effects from some antibiotics. In the brain, it can be caused by a vestibular migraine, multiple sclerosis, malformations of brain structures or a stroke from lack of blood flow or bleed (hemorrhage) in the cerebellum.

Inflammation of the nerves in your ears also can cause vertigo. It can be either vestibular neuritis or labyrinthitis. Vestibular neuritis refers to inflammation of your vestibular nerve only while labyrinthitis involved both your vestibular nerve and your cochlear nerve. Both conditions are caused by an infection. Usually, a virus is to blame. But bacteria from a middle ear infection or meningitis can make their way into your inner ear as well.

In this case, dizziness usually comes on suddenly. Your ears may ring, and it may be hard to hear. You also may be nauseated and have a fever and ear pain. Symptoms can last several weeks. 

If it’s caused by a virus and can’t be treated with antibiotics, medication can help make you feel better as the infection runs its course.

This condition brings on intense periods of vertigo that can last hours. You may feel fullness or pressure in one ear. Other symptoms include ringing in your ears, hearing loss, and nausea. You may feel exhausted after the attack passes.

People with Meniere’s disease have too much fluid in their inner ear. Doctors don’t know what causes it, and there’s no cure for it. It’s usually treated with diet changes (a low-salt diet) and medicine to control the dizziness.

Dizziness can be a sign of a problem with your blood flow. Your brain needs a steady supply of oxygen-rich blood. Otherwise, you can become lightheaded and even faint.

Some causes of low blood flow to the brain include blood clots, clogged arteries, heart failure, and an irregular heartbeat. For many older people, standing suddenly can cause a sharp drop in blood pressure.

It’s important to get medical help immediately if you’re dizzy and faint or lose consciousness.

Several drugs list dizziness as a possible side effect. Check with your doctor if you take:

• Antibiotics, including gentamicin and streptomycin
• Anti-depressants
• Anti-seizure medications
• Blood pressure medicine
• Sedatives

Many people don’t drink enough fluids to replace the liquid they lose every day when they sweat, breathe, and pee. It’s particularly a problem for older people and people with diabetes.

When you’re severely dehydrated, your blood pressure can drop, your brain may not get enough oxygen, and you’ll feel dizzy. Other symptoms of dehydration include thirstiness, tiredness, and dark urine.

To help with dehydration, drink plenty of water or diluted fruit juice, and limit coffee, tea, and soda.

People with diabetes need to check the amount of sugar (glucose) in their blood often. You can get dizzy if it drops too low. That also can cause hunger, shakiness, sweating, and confusion. Some people without diabetes also have trouble with low blood sugar, but that’s rare.

A quick fix is to eat or drink something with sugar, like juice or a hard candy.

Dizziness can be a sign of many other illnesses, including:

• Migraines, even if you don’t feel pain
• Stress or anxiety
• Nervous-system problems like peripheral neuropathy and multiple sclerosis
• Tumor in the brain or inner ear

You may have other symptoms besides dizziness with any of these conditions. If your dizziness won’t go away or impacts your ability to function, make sure to discuss it with your doctor to find out the cause and treat it.

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Why Am I Dizzy? 7 Possible Causes of Dizziness and How To Treat It

Written by Stephanie Langmaid

• Is It Vertigo?
• Is It an Infection?
• Is It Meniere’s Disease?
• Is It Your Circulation?
• Is It Your Medication?
• Is It Dehydration?
• Is It Low Blood Sugar?
• Is It Something Else?
• More

Many parts of your body — including your eyes, brain, inner ear, and nerves in your feet and spine — work together to keep you balanced. When a part of that system is off, you can feel dizzy. It can be a sign of something serious, and it can be dangerous if it makes you fall.

Your doctor will look at all your symptoms and overall health to figure out what’s going on and how to treat it.

Get medical attention immediately if you’re dizzy and you faint, fall, or can’t walk or have any of the following:

• Chest pain
• Different or really bad headache
• Head injury
• High fever
• Irregular heart rate
• Seizures
• Shortness of breath
• Stiff neck
• Sudden change in speech, vision, or hearing
• Vomiting
• Weakness or numbness in your face
• Weakness in your leg or arm

Does it feel like you’re spinning or the room is moving around you? That’s a classic sign of a particular type of dizziness called vertigo. It’s more than feeling off-kilter and usually gets worse when you move your head. This is a symptom that there is an issue in the inner ear or part of the brainstem governing balance. The most common kind is benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV.

Your inner ear is a complicated system of canals filled with fluid. These let your brain know how your head is moving. With BPPV, tiny bits of calcium in part of your inner ear get loose and move to places they don’t belong. The system doesn’t work the way it should and sends your brain the wrong signals.

It’s often caused by the natural breakdown of cells that happens with age. A head injury can cause it, too.

You’ll feel it briefly when you tilt or turn your head, and especially when you roll over in bed or sit up. BPPV isn’t serious and usually goes away on its own. If not — or you’d like to help it along — it can be treated with special head exercises (“particle repositioning exercises”) called the Epley maneuver to get the pieces of calcium back in place. Most people feel better after one to three treatments.

There are other causes of vertigo both in and outside the brain. You can have Meniere disease (described below), labyrinthitis (described below), a tumor called an acoustic neuroma or side effects from some antibiotics. In the brain, it can be caused by a vestibular migraine, multiple sclerosis, malformations of brain structures or a stroke from lack of blood flow or bleed (hemorrhage) in the cerebellum.

Inflammation of the nerves in your ears also can cause vertigo. It can be either vestibular neuritis or labyrinthitis. Vestibular neuritis refers to inflammation of your vestibular nerve only while labyrinthitis involved both your vestibular nerve and your cochlear nerve. Both conditions are caused by an infection. Usually, a virus is to blame. But bacteria from a middle ear infection or meningitis can make their way into your inner ear as well.

In this case, dizziness usually comes on suddenly. Your ears may ring, and it may be hard to hear. You also may be nauseated and have a fever and ear pain. Symptoms can last several weeks. 

If it’s caused by a virus and can’t be treated with antibiotics, medication can help make you feel better as the infection runs its course.

This condition brings on intense periods of vertigo that can last hours. You may feel fullness or pressure in one ear. Other symptoms include ringing in your ears, hearing loss, and nausea. You may feel exhausted after the attack passes.

People with Meniere’s disease have too much fluid in their inner ear. Doctors don’t know what causes it, and there’s no cure for it. It’s usually treated with diet changes (a low-salt diet) and medicine to control the dizziness.

Dizziness can be a sign of a problem with your blood flow. Your brain needs a steady supply of oxygen-rich blood. Otherwise, you can become lightheaded and even faint.

Some causes of low blood flow to the brain include blood clots, clogged arteries, heart failure, and an irregular heartbeat. For many older people, standing suddenly can cause a sharp drop in blood pressure.

It’s important to get medical help immediately if you’re dizzy and faint or lose consciousness.

Several drugs list dizziness as a possible side effect. Check with your doctor if you take:

• Antibiotics, including gentamicin and streptomycin
• Anti-depressants
• Anti-seizure medications
• Blood pressure medicine
• Sedatives

Many people don’t drink enough fluids to replace the liquid they lose every day when they sweat, breathe, and pee. It’s particularly a problem for older people and people with diabetes.

When you’re severely dehydrated, your blood pressure can drop, your brain may not get enough oxygen, and you’ll feel dizzy. Other symptoms of dehydration include thirstiness, tiredness, and dark urine.

To help with dehydration, drink plenty of water or diluted fruit juice, and limit coffee, tea, and soda.

People with diabetes need to check the amount of sugar (glucose) in their blood often. You can get dizzy if it drops too low. That also can cause hunger, shakiness, sweating, and confusion. Some people without diabetes also have trouble with low blood sugar, but that’s rare.

A quick fix is to eat or drink something with sugar, like juice or a hard candy.

Dizziness can be a sign of many other illnesses, including:

• Migraines, even if you don’t feel pain
• Stress or anxiety
• Nervous-system problems like peripheral neuropathy and multiple sclerosis
• Tumor in the brain or inner ear

You may have other symptoms besides dizziness with any of these conditions. If your dizziness won’t go away or impacts your ability to function, make sure to discuss it with your doctor to find out the cause and treat it.

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Dizziness

Dizziness – the causes of occurrence, in which diseases it occurs, diagnosis and methods of treatment.

Every person during his life at least once experienced dizziness – a condition in which it seems that the body and / or the environment are rotating, there is a feeling of instability, balance is lost, orientation in space is disturbed.

A single dizziness is not a cause for concern, but if the attacks are repeated regularly, and also become prolonged, accompanied by other symptoms (nausea, vomiting, heart palpitations, etc.) – this is a reason to see a doctor.

It is very important to identify the cause of dizziness in a timely manner, because, firstly, it can be a symptom of serious diseases, and secondly, dizziness is dangerous in itself, because it can lead to injuries.

Varieties of dizziness

It is customary to distinguish between the following types of dizziness:

– proprioceptive – with a sense of movement (rotation) of the body in space;

– tactile – with a sense of movement, swing, instability of the support under the feet;

– visual – with a sense of the movement of the environment around you.

Dizziness is also divided into central and peripheral. Peripheral dizziness begins acutely: a person cannot stand without support, is forced to sit down or even lie down. In this case, as a rule, there are nausea, vomiting, excessive sweating, heart palpitations, tinnitus. Central vertigo is less pronounced, but differs in duration. With this type of dizziness, such neurological symptoms as blurred vision, impaired tactile and pain sensitivity, and coordination are observed.

Possible causes of dizziness

Dizziness can occur for a variety of reasons, including in completely healthy people: for example, under stress, as a result of poor nutrition, frequent smoking and alcohol intoxication, impaired focusing of vision, fast non-linear movement (for example, on a carousel), etc. .

Dizziness can be caused by medication,

including antibiotics, diuretics, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (diclofenac, ibuprofen, etc.), anticancer drugs (used for chemotherapy), angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (enalapril, fosinopril), antidepressants, antimalarial drugs, calcium channel blockers (nifedipine, etc. ) and etc.

To find out the exact cause of dizziness, you need to consult a doctor who will conduct an initial examination and prescribe methods for further diagnosis. It should be remembered that

dizziness can be a symptom of a dozen different diseases, the diagnosis of which requires various studies.

What diseases cause dizziness

Diseases of the inner ear

Intense rotational vertigo is a typical symptom of diseases of the inner ear (an organ that is responsible not only for hearing, but also for balance),

such as:

– benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV). The cause of this pathology is the displacement of otoliths – the smallest crystals located on the surface of the cells of the inner ear, and a change in the normal hydromechanics of the fluids of the inner ear. BPPV is manifested by sudden, short-term, severe dizziness when changing body position, sometimes accompanied by nausea and vomiting;

– Meniere’s disease. A disease in which there is an increase in the volume of fluid in the inner ear and an increase in pressure in it. The patient has recurrent attacks of progressive deafness (usually unilateral), tinnitus and dizziness. The causes of this disease are not completely clear, but they can be associated with vascular pathologies, the consequences of injuries (head, ear), inflammatory and infectious diseases of the inner ear.

Dizziness can be caused by inflammation (labyrinthitis) and trauma (acoustic, mechanical, barotrauma) of the inner ear.

Diseases of the vessels of the brain (cerebrovascular diseases)

Dizziness can be associated with pathologies in which the blood supply to the brain is disturbed:

– atherosclerosis of cerebral vessels (cerebral atherosclerosis) is a serious disease accompanied by the formation of atherosclerotic plaques in the vessels of the brain and leading to impaired cerebral circulation. In the early stages, it manifests itself with symptoms such as dizziness, fatigue, irritability, difficulty concentrating;

– chronic cerebral ischemia – a disease characterized by a progressive deterioration in the blood supply to the brain. A person suffers from dizziness, headaches, impaired coordination, memory worsens, and the general psychological state.

Volumetric intracranial masses

Dizziness may be associated with neoplasms (for example, acoustic neuroma, etc.), inflammatory lesions of the cerebellum, etc.

Cardiovascular diseases

Dizziness can occur with various cardiovascular pathologies: cardiac arrhythmias (arrhythmias, tachycardia, bradycardia), arterial hypo- or hypertension, heart failure, etc.

Degenerative-dystrophic changes in the cervical spine

Dizziness is often found in patients with problems of the cervical spine, such as osteochondrosis, protrusions and herniated discs, uncovertebral arthrosis of the cervical spine. Dizziness occurs due to difficulty in the flow of blood to the brain due to compression of the vertebral arteries.

Also, dizziness can be caused by neurological and mental diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, migraine, Alzheimer’s disease, a number of infectious diseases, anemia (a decrease in hemoglobin levels in the blood).

Which doctors should I contact?

When dizziness occurs, you should first of all contact a therapist (children – a pediatrician), who will determine which specialist to refer to next. If the possible cause of dizziness is associated with diseases of the cardiovascular system, you will need to consult a cardiologist. If the symptoms indicate a pathology of the inner ear – a neurologist and an otolaryngologist. With neurosis, anxiety, the patient will be referred to a psychotherapist, neurologist.

Diagnostics and examinations

To accurately diagnose cerebrovascular diseases leading to dizziness, ultrasound examination of the vessels of the brain allows,

Dizziness: Causes, Symptoms, Treatment | doc.ua

Dizziness is a feeling of instability in space, accompanied by rotation “inside the head”, rotation and vibration of objects around you, imbalance, orientation in space. Dizziness is a symptom, one of the manifestations of a disease or temporary functional abnormalities in the body.

Attention!

Here you can choose a doctor who treats Vertigo If you are not sure about the diagnosis, make an appointment with your general practitioner or general practitioner to clarify the diagnosis.

Causes

Orientation in space is ensured by the coordinated work of the vestibular and visual analyzers, deep sensitivity. With a violation that occurs in any of these systems, or a violation of their interaction, dizziness appears. Your head may feel dizzy when you stand or lie down.

The causes of dizziness are many and varied. Both sick and healthy people can experience these disorders. The head can spin on the background of stress, with overwork, after alcohol intoxication. Such painful conditions are associated with temporary and short-lived deviations in health. Functional disorders in the form of dizziness are observed in pregnant women, while traveling in transport, observing fast moving objects.

But dizziness is of particular concern, the causes of which are associated with diseases. The doctor listens to complaints of dizziness quite often. Whether you have a cold or a low (high) blood pressure, you may experience this symptom. And the main thing for the doctor is to find out the cause of this condition, not to miss the onset of a serious illness, for example, a tumor.

Vertigo is divided into vestibular and non-vestibular.

Vestibular vertigo occurs more frequently. The reasons can be not only lesions of the vestibular apparatus itself, but also the impact of any diseases on it. The only manifestation of vestibulopathy is often only dizziness.

If pathological changes do not occur in the vestibular apparatus, then the resulting changes are referred to as non-vestibular disorders. They differ in severity, duration of manifestation and combination with other health disorders.

Symptoms

Turning and tilting the head, even slightly, aggravates dizziness. The patient lies with the diseased ear turned up, which greatly alleviates or completely stops the dizziness.

Meniere’s disease is characterized by dizziness. In this case, hearing is necessarily reduced. Depending on the variant of the disease, severe severe dizziness and not severe, but prolonged dizziness are distinguished.

Pathology of the heart and blood vessels – diseases in which frequent dizziness is noted. These are hypotension, hypertension, cerebrovascular accident. A striking example of severe vascular insufficiency can be fainting, which in the initial stage is characterized by severe dizziness in combination with other symptoms: weakness, pallor, nausea, visual impairment.

Osteochondrosis of the cervical spine causes periodic dizziness.

The state of the nervous system is of great importance for the occurrence of dizziness. This is a common symptom of vegetative-vascular dystonia. Brain tumors cause an increase in intracranial pressure, irritation of the vestibular apparatus. There are dizziness of varying intensity. Encephalitis, arachnoiditis, multiple sclerosis and a whole list of diseases of the nervous system lead to dizziness.

The same phenomena are observed due to traumatic brain damage.

Nausea and dizziness are two symptoms that often accompany each other and mutually worsen one’s well-being. Nausea often occurs against the background of severe dizziness. They can be simultaneously present in severe manifestations of heart and vascular diseases, brain tumors.

The list of diseases and temporary transient conditions, when dizziness is one of the symptoms or the main symptom, cannot be fully covered. Listed above are some of the common diseases that are characterized by the symptom of dizziness. It can be concluded that in order to effectively treat dizziness, it is necessary to look for its cause.

Diagnosis

The relationship of symptoms of dizziness with other manifestations of the disease helps the doctor to establish the correct diagnosis. Questioning, examination and additional examination data allow for a differential diagnosis between diseases.

It is obligatory to consult an otolaryngologist and conduct all studies necessary to exclude or confirm vestibular disorders. Consultations of a neurologist, ophthalmologist, cardiologist also help in establishing the causes of dizziness.

EEG and REG data allow assessing the activity of brain neurons and the state of its vessels.

Among the additional methods of examination, special mention should be made of MRI of the brain, which makes it possible to exclude tumors, to see and evaluate traumatic and inflammatory changes in the brain.

Treatment

The treatment of vertigo is to alleviate the patient’s condition while correcting the changes caused in the body by the underlying disease.

Dizziness, the treatment of which is carried out after its cause has been established, is carried out by conservative and operative (tumors, injuries, etc.