Posted in Category : Common Ailments | June 23, 2009

Causes of Dizziness

At some point or another throughout the course of one’s life, a person has been through the experience of feeling dizzy. Dizziness can very often be quite harmless, but can also be a strong symptom of an underlying problem. Very frequently dizziness is brought on due to some kind of infection to the middle ear. Since the middle ear plays an important role in the body retaining balance, if this were to be affected, it would lead to a feeling of “spinning” or imbalance causing the person to collapse.

Since dizziness is also a symptom for a large number of diseases, it is very hard to diagnose what the underlying problem could be based on this single symptom and is usually accompanied by some other symptom. While dizziness could be nothing more than a person’s balance being affected by standing up too quickly, it could be brought on by a number of more serious conditions like high blood or low blood pressure.

Dizziness can also be caused by a person getting a heart attack or arrhythmia (irregular heart rhythms), or the heart rate beating either too fast or too slow. Metabolic disorders like low blood oxygen and low blood sugar will also lead to a person feeling light headed.

A number of conditions that affect the brain such as a stroke, tumor or hyperventilation can also be underlying causes as can any kind of stoppage or pause in blood supply to the brain.

Causes of Dizziness Lightheadedness

If you look closely at the boxes of a number of common medications available in a medical store, you will notice that dizziness is often mentioned as a side effect of usage. This is because a number of the medications available today make use of sedatives to help a person’s body relax. This would cause the feeling of lightheadedness once the drug enters the blood stream.

Along with dizziness, a person will tend to experience a number of other symptoms including, but not limited to – feeling faint, nausea, tired and off balance.

One of the more severe complications of dizziness is vertigo. Vertigo is a more specific type of dizziness and is brought about considerably by a problem of the inner ear. Persons suffering from vertigo will experience intense loss of balance and a sensation of the room spinning or a feeling of movement that isn’t real. Symptoms for vertigo include abnormal eye movements in addition to the other symptoms one notices along with dizziness.

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