Vertigo

What is vertigo?

Vertigo is a condition that makes you feel like you or your surroundings are spinning. You might also experience:

• Loss of balance
• Nausea and vomiting
• Disorientation
• Ringing in your ears
• Headaches
• Uncontrollable eye movement

Dizziness (lightheadedness) and vertigo can occur together, but you can also have one without the other.

What causes vertigo?

Problems in your inner ear or an underlying health condition frequently cause vertigo. Reasons you might feel like your head is spinning include:

• Inner ear infection
• Inflamed or damaged nerve
• Meniere’s disease
• Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV)
• Epilepsy
• Migraines
• Dementia
• Stroke
• Tumors
• Concussion
• Multiple sclerosis (MS)

BPPV, an inner ear condition, causes spinning sensations when you move your head up or down, lie down, or turn over in bed.

Dizziness can appear due to an inner ear problem and another condition that might not trigger vertigo. For example, you can feel dizzy if you’re dehydrated, overheated, and stressed.

Heart disease, traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), low blood sugar, and migraines are a few health conditions that cause dizziness.

How is vertigo diagnosed?

While symptoms alone can often confirm that you have vertigo, your provider might need to run lab tests and order diagnostic imaging and other tests to diagnose the cause.

If your vertigo is associated with epilepsy, your provider will likely do an electroencephalogram (EEG). Vertigo testing also includes evaluating your balance and learning if you feel the same sensation when performing eye or head movements.

How is vertigo treated?

At Advanced Neurology of Katy, the team devotes time to each patient, learning about their symptoms and concerns and creating a treatment plan that meets their needs. This personalized approach is especially beneficial when treating vertigo.

Depending on the cause of your vertigo, your provider could recommend one of many therapies. For starters, it’s essential to treat the condition responsible for your vertigo (if one exists).

You might need medication to relieve symptoms or start vestibular rehabilitation (if a balance disorder causes your vertigo). Lowering salt and avoiding caffeine, refined carbohydrates, and processed foods helps improve Meniere’s disease.

They treat BPPV by putting you through controlled head and body movements. The movements restore your balance by correcting the problem in your inner ear.

Vertigo and dizziness can lead to injury and hospitalization if you lose your balance and fall. Call the office today or book an evaluation online to get treatment to overcome vertigo.