{"id":202788,"date":"2024-12-30T10:43:50","date_gmt":"2024-12-30T16:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/why-dizziness-is-still-a-mystery"},"modified":"2024-12-30T10:43:50","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T16:43:50","slug":"why-dizziness-is-still-a-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/why-dizziness-is-still-a-mystery","title":{"rendered":"Why Dizziness Is Still a Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/why-dizziness-is-still-a-mystery2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>You can trigger a dizzy spell by standing up too fast, skipping lunch, spinning in a circle, or drinking too much alcohol. Dizziness can be linked to one\u2019s ears, brain, heart, or metabolic system. The treatments, likewise, are heterogeneous. In benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, crystals in the inner ear canals become loose; physical repositioning, known as maneuvers, can usually treat it. For conditions of chronic dizziness called persistent postural perceptual dizziness (P.P.P.D.), vestibular rehabilitation and S.S.R.I.s, which normally treat depression and anxiety, seem to work better. Vestibular migraine is treated through the use of migraine-specific supplements or medications\u2014which wouldn\u2019t be advised for someone with the buildup of inner-ear fluid known as M\u00e9ni\u00e8re\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n<p>The sensation we call dizziness is a sort of general alarm system for the body\u2014but just as a fire alarm can\u2019t tell you where a fire is burning (or whether someone walked through the emergency exit by mistake), it doesn\u2019t necessarily tell you what\u2019s wrong. Dasgupta argued that diagnosing the causes of dizziness requires a lost clinical art known as anamnesis, or a holistic interview about the patient\u2019s symptoms and their surrounding context. \u201cThis is like detective work,\u201d he said. Diego Kaski, who treats vestibular patients as a consulting neurologist at the U.K.\u2019s National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, tries to understand his patient\u2019s symptoms by imagining that they are happening to him. He often relies on gestures: if people have vertigo, which includes the illusion of movement, \u201cthey might spin their finger or their hand around,\u201d Kaski told me. Others will hold onto their heads or rock their upper bodies from side to side. Patient accounts tend to be psychological as well as physical. \u201cYou lose control of what your body is doing, and that can be quite a fearful experience,\u201d Kaski said. Many dizzy people wonder whether they are dying.<\/p>\n<p>While visiting doctor after doctor, I learned from a Google search about what sounded like a dizziness utopia: the German Center for Vertigo and Balance Disorders, or D.S.G.Z., in Munich. It was originally funded by the German federal government and, since 2019, has operated as an interdisciplinary center of the University Hospital of Munich.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can trigger a dizzy spell by standing up too fast, skipping lunch, spinning in a circle, or drinking too much alcohol. Dizziness can be linked to one\u2019s ears, brain, heart, or metabolic system. The treatments, likewise, are heterogeneous. In benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, crystals in the inner ear canals become loose; physical repositioning, known [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1490,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-202788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-government","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}