Vertigo Is More Than Simply Feeling Dizzy

"It's just a little dizzy spell" is something that you may find yourself saying from time to time after being exposed to some stimulus that leaves you struggling to keep your balance. However, there comes a point when that dizziness happens so often that you may actually be gripping with vertigo. Derived from "verto," the Latin word for a whirling or spinning motion, this is a condition that is connected to sensations of nausea, impaired walking and even vomiting as a result of impaired balance.

The rest of this article has been written to better inform people on how vertigo manifests, what disorders contribute to the sensation of vertigo, clarify the distinction between a momentary bout of dizziness and an actual moment of vertigo and lastly, explain what a person can do to steady themselves and manage the condition if they or someone they care for is experiencing the condition.

Causes of Vertigo

There are many causes of vertigo that might creep up. In many cases, vertigo is due to other medical conditions, with vertiigo simply being a symptom. Some of the causes include: 

• Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo - BPPV happens when loose calcium carbonate breaks off from the otoconial membrane. This is the most common source of vertigo and episodes usually only linger for a minute at most.
• Ménière's Disease - This inner ear disorder is believed to occur when there is excess endolymphatic fluid present in the inner ear. Patients experience recurring spontaneous bouts of vertigo as well as tinnitus, pressure within the ear, diminished hearing, loss of balance and vomiting or nausea.
• Labyrinthitis - This manifests as severe vertigo with nausea, vomiting, loss of balance and so on. It is a viral inner ear infection.
• Vestibular Migraine - This manifests as vertigo and migraines and is hypothesized to happen when the trigeminal nerve leads to repetitive uncontrolled eye movement.
• Motion Sickness - This happens when the eyes and body disagree on whether the body is in motion, such as reading text while in transit.
• Alternobaric Vertigo - This flares up when there is a pressure differential between the middle ears, usually from diving or flying.

Vertigo vs. Being Dizzy

Regular dizziness happens to 20-40% of the human populace. Vertigo is considerably rarer than bouts of dizziness; only between 7.5-10% of people ever experience some form of vertigo, with 5% experiencing at least one bout every year. Vertigo's occurrence seems dependent upon age and gender; chances rise as a person ages and women seem far more prone to it than men, at a rate between two and three times as often. Vertigo is also responsible for as much as 3% of all emergency medical trips on a global scale.

Vertigo is when you feel like the world is spinning while you stay in one spot. Beyond the physical issues associated with impaired balance, this condition can also cause drastic shifts in thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, some people can have recurring bouts of vertigo that can have a greatly debilitating effect on their daily lives. It is not unheard of for someone with vertigo to also experience trouble seeing clearly, difficulty verbalizing, diminished awareness and even impaired hearing.

Treating Vertigo

Other than the potential of antibiotics to treat labyrinthitis, there is no cure for vertigo, only ways of managing it. Since there are multiple ailments that contribute to episodes of vertigo, the manner in which the condition is managed varies with its underlying cause.

Options for fighting off the vertigo and tinnitus include a diet that is low in salt,  injections of antibiotics or even a surgical procedure involving the labyrinth of the inner ear. There are several drug options under a variety of categories that have been prescribed to counteract or prevent sensations of vertigo. Some medication are used to block signals within the nervous system. Anticonvulsants are medications that prevent the sort of convulsions that can occur from vestibular migraines. There are also medications for dealing with inflammatory conditions related to migraines and also handling Ménière's disease.

Other ways of managing vertigo include getting low to the ground or sitting still within a dark room with eyes closed. People with recurring vertigo episodes are advised to avoid operating vehicles or heavy machinery when their vertigo is known to manifest without warning.