dizzyandvertigo.com (310)400-6759

Why Am I Dizzy? Suddenly, it’s as if someone just shook up your entire world like a snow globe. You’ve lost your bearings. You reach for something sturdy. And the moment seems to spin into oblivion. Once life reverts to stability, you’re left wondering: why am I dizzy?

Like any singular symptom there are numerous possible causes. There’s more than one way to get a headache, and there’s more than one way to experience dizziness.

In this article, we’ll try our best to address the entire spectrum of imbalance sources. And put you in the right direction to get help at the end.

How do we balance? First, you must understand where our balance originates because then you can isolate what is contributing to the problems. For instance, you wouldn’t blame your toenails for your dizziness. Although, I suppose if you didn’t cut them for a very long time it might throw off your steps. Yuck!

Anyways, your balance is made up of signals received by the eyes, muscles and joints, and inner ear.

When any one of these sources of input is off, your entire balance system will malfunction. Of course, different problems in each area need a different type of medical attention.

The following are problems associated with each input center.

Eyes, Muscles, and Joints The main role that these inputs play is in confirming the body’s orientation for the brain to understand. Basically, they help confirm location awareness and coordination. If what you’re seeing/feeling doesn’t match with what your inner ear and brain believe, the result is dizziness, imbalance, or vertigo.

Sources of imbalance: • Poor eyesight – if you can’t see properly then your body cannot

balance properly • Poor muscle and joint control – if your body can’t feel it’s

surroundings how can it support itself

• Nerve damage

For obvious reasons, these are often sources of imbalance for the elderly. The best fixes are to always maintain the optimal eyeglass prescription and continue to keep the body in shape.

Exercises that are great for improving balance: • Tai Chi • Yoga • Walking • Leg strengthening (squats, lunges, one-leg stands, etc.)

The Inner Ear Your inner ear’s involvement in balance is arguably the most critical part. It consists of a complicated system of canals filled with fluid. As your head moves, the fluid in the canals moves. And your brain understands your body’s position based on the fluid’s movement.

Sources of imbalance: • BPPV – tiny bits of calcium in part of your inner ear get loose and move

to places they don't belong. • Infection – A viral infection of the vestibular nerve, called vestibular

neuritis, can cause intense, constant vertigo. • Labyrinthitis – Inflammation of the nerves in your ears. • Meniere's Disease – too much fluid in the inner ear.

These issues often lead to vertigo, which is the false sense that your surroundings are spinning or moving. With inner ear disorders, your brain receives signals from the inner ear that aren't consistent with what your eyes and sensory nerves are receiving. Essentially, your brain is confused and tries to sort out the confusion… and the result is vertigo.

When the ears are off, then the entire vestibular system might as well be on break. Because the ears are so crucial to maintaining balance.

Brain Stem Perhaps the most serious of all would be any sort of damage to the cerebellum, which is the movement control center. The cerebellum receives messages about the body’s position from the inner ear, eyes, muscles and joints, and sends messages to the muscles to make any postural adjustments required to maintain balance. It also coordinates the timing and force of muscle movements initiated by other parts of the brain.

The cerebellum is basically the balance coordinator.

Sources of imbalance: • Concussions – residual damage from a concussion can last for years

after the fact and throw off the balance coordinator of the body. • Degeneration – cellular degeneration would affect how the cerebellum

performs.

Former athletes who’ve experienced concussions in the past may still occasionally get dizzy years later because they’ve damaged something in their inner ear or even the brain stem.

Miscellaneous Sources of Imbalance There are a number of other sources of dizziness that include:

• Dehydration & low blood sugar • Poor blood circulation • Migraines • Stress and anxiety • Medication

So, why am I dizzy? You’ve probably explored every corner of Google Search to diagnose yourself. Hey, we don’t blame you. That’s why you’re reading this.

But look at the long list of dizziness causes. That alone should tell you that you need help in diagnosing your source of imbalance.

You wouldn’t reset a broken arm on your own. So why treat your dizziness alone?

What should you do? See an Audiologist (the kind that treat vestibular problems, not fit hearing aids).

Audiologists are often the best resource to start with because they can test and address the inner ear – the major cause of frequent dizziness and vertigo. Additionally, Audiologists can point you in the right direction if it’s not inner ear related and connect you with the proper doctor to sort the issue out.

If you’re in the LA area or can travel to LA, then that’s where our office, the Dizzy & Vertigo Institute, is located.

Dizziness vs. Vertigo Too often, dizziness and vertigo are used as interchangeable terms. But they aren’t.

We’d like to set the record straight on the difference between these two terms. So that you have a better understanding of the best course of action to move forward with treatment.

What’s the Difference? All vertigo is dizziness, but not all dizziness is vertigo. Dizziness is the blanket term, while vertigo is a more specific type of dizziness. In other words, dizziness is “mathematics” while vertigo is “addition”.

Dizziness is used to describe a range of sensations such as feeling faint, woozy, weak, or unsteady. When you stand up too quickly and you get lightheaded, that’s dizziness. When you lose your bearings and stumble aside, that’s dizziness.

Vertigo is a form of dizziness that creates a false sense that you or your surroundings are spinning or moving. It’s an illusion. False signals in the body’s balance centers cause your body to overcompensate and create this false sense of motion. People often describe it as being suddenly scooped up by a speeding train going in circles.

One third of vestibular disorders come with vertigo symptoms. So it’s quite a common symptom amongst dizzy patients.

35% of adults aged 40 years or older in the US have experienced some form of vestibular dysfunction. That’s a third of the adult population having issues with

dizziness. And yet, it’s one of those symptoms that is easily swept under the rug. Even when chronic dizziness completely disrupts normal, everyday life.

There is help… you don’t have to be dizzy.

Diagnosis & Treatment Treating vestibular problems is a very effective science consisting of head position maneuvers, balance therapy, and in some cases psychotherapy. The Epley Maneuver, vestibular rehabilitation therapy and diet changes are among the more standard treatments. Recent advancements include the use of virtual reality applications as well.

It may seem like dizziness can be a symptom of almost everything!

That’s why the best step to take is to see an Audiologist or vestibular specialist. They’re the best resource for pinpointing the source of your symptoms and setting you on the right path.

How We Treat Dizziness Are you playing Google Search Doctor? Trying to find the remedies that will hopefully cure your dizziness? You’ve likely come across many at-home vertigo remedies involving odd head maneuver videos and tutorials.

However, you wouldn’t try to reset a broken bone on your own. So why try to fix your dizziness alone?

It can be dangerous to try and solve the cause of your dizziness on your own. Given the large number of causes of dizziness and vertigo, you might be trying to remedy the wrong problem. Your dizziness might root from something entirely different than the eyes, ears and somatosensory systems (where the balance centers are housed).

That’s why it’s best to defer to experts in the field.

A major cause of dizziness is dysfunction in the vestibular system. The brain’s balance centers cannot use the broken vestibular data to determine proper positioning in space and only have correct input from the eyes and somatosensory systems. Therefore the brain takes on an additional role in trying to compensate for the vestibular weakness. This is exhausting! The result is dizziness. And this might be you.

So how do we fix this problem?

The key is through brain plasticity – basically reorienting the way your brain helps you balance through a vestibular rehabilitation program.

The purpose of vestibular rehab therapy is to teach the brain to compensate for a less efficient vestibular system. Essentially, we’re training your brain to recalibrate and find balance shortcuts that don’t put you in the same position

you were before. Think of it this way: your brain is a muscle and we have to strengthen it.

Like everything in this world besides bacon and avocado, there’s never just a single fix. In other words… a magic pill does not exist.

This isn’t an article describing vestibular rehab techniques so that you can attempt them yourself. Rather, we’re lifting the veil on the methodologies we use, so that you understand the complexity of this science. And realize why you need to see an expert.

Balance Training Every house needs a great foundation. You can hang the nicest paintings, lay the shiniest tile floor, and install top of the line appliances. But if your foundation is rotten, that house is going to eventually come tumbling down.

Balance training is the foundation of dizziness treatment (but not always the first stage to treatment).

Realistically, everyone needs to be doing exercises to strengthen their core (and thus their balance) not just dizzy patients. However, for dizzy patients it is especially important.

Exercises:

• Doing a task while balancing on a plank or a ball (or anything that is not dangerous)

• Coordinated stationary and dynamic movements • Triggering somatosensory system with coordinated prompts

The purpose of the balance training therapy is to improve stability and build confidence in the patient. We want dizzy patients to be able to carry out daily activities like walking, turning, and bending without losing balance.

Balance training is one part of therapy we would encourage you to do at home as well. Yoga, tai chi, and core strengthening exercises are great ways to do so.

Gaze Stabilization An unsteady hand cannot draw a straight line, just like an unsteady eye cannot comprehend stability. The purpose, then, of gaze stabilization is to correct the unsteady eye through a set of synchronized head and eye movements. Patients will focus on an object while asked to make certain head movements. This is the underlying principle of gaze stabilization.

At the Dizzy & Vertigo Institute, we utilize virtual reality and visually immersive environments to administer these therapies.

The vestibular rehab therapy ranges from simple visual stimulation with ocular tracking to highly complex and advanced head and body movements. The treatment really depends on the diagnosis and patient’s tolerance levels. It’s like getting into cold water. Some people need to be eased in while others can jump in head first.

Habituation You would never walk into the gym and head right for the 50lb dumbbells if it were your first time there (or coming off an injury). Your muscles require repetition in order to get stronger and advance to lifting heavier weights. Similarly, your brain needs to strengthen its ability to make sense of the input from the eyes, ears, and somatosensory system.

Brains need time to learn the difference between correct and error signals. Processing these signals takes repetitions. And repetitions form habits.

Repetitive aggravating head movements, body movements, and/or visually demanding stimulation are some examples of what habituation training process entails.

It may not be fun at first. Similar to waking up with sore muscles the day after a workout, habituation training can be exhausting on the brain. But the soreness signals progress.

Canalith Repositioning When treating patients with BPPV (benign paroxysmal positional vertigo), the first treatments we turn to are the Semont Maneuver or the Epley Maneuver – canalith repositioning maneuvers.

Basically they are maneuvers we use to physically reposition the displaced otoconia (aka crystals) into their appropriate placement within the semicircular canals in the ear. The otoconia play a vital role in the balance system, so when they’re out of place, then the body feels out of alignment.

In the span of 15 minutes (the time it takes to change bed sheets) we can cure positional vertigo! Pending a proper diagnosis, these maneuvers have an approximate success rate of 80%.

Of course, if the wrong ear or semicircular canal is diagnosed or patients try to do this on their own without a trained professional, the result can be making things worse and more uncomfortable than they were before.

Honestly, that goes for all of the treatments above. Dizziness can be a very frustrating invisible symptom to live with. And the home remedies always seem so enticing. But like trying to diet while working in a cake factory, working on your dizziness without proper help can be a futile task.

Give us a call or schedule an appointment. It’ll be the first best decision you make on your journey to a dizzy-free life.