Vertigo: how to understand the reason?

Vertigo is one of the common symptoms. Usually it is a serious sign accompanied by bouts of nausea, vomiting, and severe weakness. There can be multiple reasons for dizziness while manifestations of the unpleasant symptoms themselves sometimes are not caused by true vertigo.

What is a vertigo?

This is a title of the true dizziness. This is a condition where a person has the feeling that the surrounding objects (or the whole world) rotate, or a feeling that he turns or moves while standing still. To understand this, remember the feeling that comes if you are spinning or riding a carousel for too long.

True vertigo is always a serious disease or damage to the nervous system or the adjacent vestibular system. The vestibular apparatus ( located deep in the ear) is responsible for your body’s position in space, posture control, steadiness and coordination of the human movements.

However, position of the body in space is coordinated by eyes and skin and muscle reflexes, while all feelings and actions are controlled by the brain. The receptors of the system responsible for coordinating and controlling position of the body are found in all parts of the body from muscles to bones and internal organs. That is why, when a person is dizzy he feels nauzeous.

Why people feel dizzy?

Humans have plenty of reasons for dizziness: the most obvious is the inflammation of the ear or damage of the vestibular apparatus. Your head can spin because of psychological disorders, in case of osteochondrosis, especially in the cervical spine, lack of blood circulation in the brain, or very low blood pressure.

However, it is not always possible to identify the exact cause immediately yourself, so you should definitely see the doctor, preferably a neurologist. He is the only one who can identfy the cause of dizziness and distinguish the true vertigo from the other disease.

Dizziness is most often mistaken with blackout, if you abruptly make a movement: to turn or to stand. Doctors call this phenomenon anortostatic kollaps (rapid outflow of blood from the head).

Unlike true vertigo in which the vestibular system is damaged, the false vertigo, which is described as “Everything goes dark before my eyes,” I feel bad”, usually happens because of fatigue, low hemoglobin in the blood or low blood pressure. Sometimes this is a sign of the muscle tone disorder or even epilepsy.

Causes of vertigo

Unrelated to vertigo:

• appearance of the shroud before your eyes,
• feeling of weakness,
• confusion,
• unsteadiness,
• nausea episodes,
• feeling close to fainting (severe weakness with nausea),
• impaired balance with instability in gait.
• What is not considered vertigo?

Vertigo is recognised as a symptom of some pathologies:

• primarily, benign bouts of dizziness,
• psychogenic causes of vertigo,
• dizziness during migraines,
• auditory vertigo,
• neuritis of the vestibular nerve,
• brain tumor,
• degenerative spine disease in the neck area with disrupted blood circulation.

The good news is that the overwhelming percentage of cases of vertigo are not symptoms of serious illness. Such bouts of vertigo occur spontaneously and also pass spontaneously. They usually occur at sharp turns of the head or body in different directions.

The reason for this phenomenon is a sharp and unusual irritation of the nerves within the vestibular apparatus by certain substances. This usually happens after the age of 50. The episode occurs when you tilt the head, turning in bed and at sharp bows. You can also feel nausea at this. The attack lasts up to a couple of minutes and ends on itself. The treatment basis is a set of special exercises to train the vestibular apparatus.

Psychological

Such attacks occur in over-emotional and sensitive people with phobias, and in this case there are no real disturbances in the vestibular apparatus. At the same time these people describe vertigo as confusion, haze, fear of falling and injury, spinning of objects and their body.

Usually these episodes occur in stressful situations, in closed premises, in crowded places. At the same time there might be manifestations of hysteria – a tickle and a lump in the throat, dull pain in the chest, feeling of choking, sweatiness and sleep disorder. In this case, the patient should unbutton his shirt, if any, offer him or her water and, if possible, take out into the fresh air.

A migraine attack

Dizziness is often accompanied by migraine further worsening unpleasant symptoms. This is caused by the blood circulation disorders in the areas of brain responsible for the work of the vestibular apparatus. Sometimes dizziness is part of a typical aura before a migraine attack.

To minimize the impact of external factors, people with migraine are encouraged to use earplugs, special sun glasses, fluorescent lamps, sleeping masks and special pillows. For such people it is important to be able to relax. There are special techniques for this.

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Vertigo appearing abruptly, may indicate serious problems with the brain (stroke, tumor, inflammation of the brain tissue) and require immediate medical advice. Do not use for vertigo something advised by your friends.

Have you experienced vertigo?