Good morning. Do you know of anyone who’s had vertigo or the feeling of being off balanced? Have you experienced it? Did it frighten you?
I’m Dr. Steven Levine of ENT and Allergy Associates in Trumbull, and together with WICC600, bring you important medical news every Thursday morning.
Vertigo is a sensation of disequilibrium where the patient feels abnormal motion. Sometimes, the room around you is spinning. At other times, you feel like your spinning and the room is in place. For others yet, there’s a vague sense of motion imbalance and sometimes nausea. What is so difficult for us doctors is that there are plenty of ways to describe what this feels like.
To make things even more confusing, there are all sorts of other kinds of dizziness. For example, there’s lightheadedness or near-fainting. For others there’s an uncomfortable feeling when walking down a grocery aisle. Symptoms may be always present, or may be only associated with certain changes in position.
Our bodies control balance using a host of complicated systems. We tend to think of the inner ear as the balance center, but it also involves the eyes, brain, spinal column, muscles surrounding the spinal column, and all of our peripheral nerves. Don’t forget how important our heart and blood vessels are since problems there also cause dizziness.
Given how uncomfortable the symptom is and how complicated finding the cause sometimes can be, acute dizziness or vertigo always should be evaluated by a physician. It is not something to sit at home and wait for it to pass. And because it can be complicated to figure out, many different types of doctors may be necessary. That would include an internist or family physician, neurologist, cardiologist, and of course otolaryngologist or Ear, Nose & Throat specialist.
A good website for more information is E-N-T Allergy M-D dot com.
I’m Dr. Steven Levine. You give us two minutes, and we’ll give you the latest updates in news about health and healthcare. For more about the doctors and services at ENT and Allergy Associates in Trumbull, on the web go to WICC600 dot com, and click on the experts tab.
Sorry, comments are closed for this post.