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Dizziness

Types and causes of dizziness


What is vertigo?

Dizziness is the sensation of movement of yourself or things around. Very often people come on reception to the doctor complaining of dizziness. The cause of vertigo can be a variety of diseases – both benign and dangerous to human life. Identified approximately 80 of the reasons that can cause dizziness, 20% of them combine a number of reasons.

In a healthy person a state of equilibrium is due to the combination entering the cortex of the human brain of signals from vestibular, visual and proprioceptive systems. The impulses coming from the cerebral cortex, reach skeletal and eye muscles, due to this is a steady position and the desired position of the eyeballs.

In the case that the flow of impulses from the vestibular divisions of the cortex of the temporal and parietal lobes is violated, there is an illusory motion perception of the surrounding things or his body. Often patients the concept of "vertigo"is wrong. Sometimes a person experiencing a state of nausea, the approach of the deprivation of consciousness, feelings of emptiness, of"lightness in the head" is perceived as vertigo, although the symptoms of approaching syncope are combined with autonomic disorders, such as pallor, palpitations, nausea, blurred vision, hyperhidrosis (sweating). A similar condition can be caused by cardiovascular disease, orthostatic hypotension, hypoglycemia, anemia, myopia of high degree.

Often, patients are under a dizzy mean imbalance, i.e., instability, vacillation when walking. These disorders can be organic lesions of the nervous system and, of course, are not the dizziness.


The types of dizziness

Psychogenic vertigo: after strong emotional experiences or extreme fatigue. The person feels a vague sense of instability, confusion in the head, weakness. Pathological conditions that are accompanied by dizziness, can be some mental syndromes – hysteria, depersonalization, anxiety with panic attacks.

Dizzy with brain disorders usually occurs due to abnormalities of the cerebellum. It could be a tumor, displacement of the cerebellum with hydrocephalus, injuries to the skull or neckspine, vascular disorders of the brain. Sudden dizziness can signal an infarction of the cerebellum; it happens because of bleeding in the brain if the patient is conscious. Loss of vegetative nuclei, which are located under the large hemispheres of the brain, are the second important cause of vertigo with brain disorders. This may be due to inflammatory or vascular lesions, or by poisoning with chemicals or drugs. Such drugs include barbiturates and anti-convulsants, causing drowsiness and lethargy, dizziness. Excessive use of streptomycin can lead to irreversible brain lesions.

Dizziness eye nature happen in healthy people as a result of unusual visual stimulation (eg, rapid movement of objects or height). The cause may be and pathology of the eye muscles, that is paralysis, which leads to disruption of the projections of objects on the retina, and "drawing" the wrong picture in the brain.

Dizziness in the pathology of the ear is possible because of the injury to different structures: the vestibular system, nerves and blood vessels, or Eustachian tube (connecting the cavity of the ear with the nasal cavity). Vertigo, combined with hearing loss, pain or ringing in the ears, or the same manifestation of vertigo in certain head position can occur depending on the lesion. The simplest cause of vertigo may be sulfuric plug in the external auditory canal.

The causes of dizziness

There are many causes of vertigo. It can appear due to lesions of the inner ear or the vestibular nerve. This vertigo is called peripheral vertigo. Various diseases of the brain can also cause vertigo, then it is called Central vertigo. Symptoms of dizziness and its nature, frequency and duration of attacks it is possible to determine the real cause of dizziness: if there is any discharge from the ear, hearing loss, it indicates inflammation of the inner ear and requires conservative treatment.

If dizziness is accompanied by tinnitus, nausea, vomiting, hearing impairment, this indicates the presence of Meniere's disease.

If auditory function is not broken, it can talk about the signs of vestibular neuritis. Neuritis manifested by sudden severe vertigo, systematic vomiting, withtrying to get out of bed sense of rotation increases, as well as the spin head. These symptoms disappear gradually within two to three days from the onset of the disease.

In case of a sudden unilateral deafness, tinnitus and vomiting in more than half of the patients detected by perilymphatic fistula. In other cases, the fistula may be different degrees of pronounced dizziness and hearing damage (noise, ringing in the ears, hearing loss). In the case of unilateral hearing impairment and dizziness is to check whether a brain tumor. Such vertigo is manifested gradually, often accompanied by a slowly growing headachethat is worse when certain locations of the body.

In case of dizziness after injuries of the head or spine the reason may be "whiplash" or traumatic brain injury.