Vertigo is surprisingly common. Here’s how to handle it
BY Karen Robock
HEALTH
ONE MORNING LAST winter, Lynn Smith was doing a series of gentle yoga stretches in her living room, trying to loosen up a stiff lower back. When the 56-year-old sat up, she felt a bit strange. “I started to feel dizzy in a way I had not felt before,” she says.
In bed that night, Smith had the sensation that the room was spinning. She would later learn that she was experiencing her first episode of vertigo.
Vertigo is often described as a sensation of motion, but it’s more complex than a dizzy spell. Ringing in the ears, loss of balance, double vision and trouble swallowing are other common sensations, depending on what is causing the vertigo. Each episode can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few days.
Although it can affect people of all ages, vertigo is most common in midlife and beyond. It’s also more prevalent in women, though experts don’t fully understand why, says Dr Terry Fife, a neurologist at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, who specialises in balance disorders. Nearly 35 per cent of adults will experience vertigo at least once in their lifetime, according to one Canadian study.
It’s important to understand that vertigo is not a disease in itself: it’s a symptom. There are many reasons why someone may have vertigo, but it generally falls into one of two types: peripheral vertigo and central vertigo.
With peripheral vertigo, the most common cause is a condition called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV (less common causes are head injury or Ménière’s disease, a rare inner-ear condition). BPPV develops when canaliths (tiny crystal-like calcium particles) that naturally occur inside the ear become loose and move deeper into the inner-ear canals. As they roll around inside, they can disrupt the transmission of information to the brain about balance. BPPV-caused vertigo can then flare up when someone leans back to look up into a high kitchen cupboard, bends over to tie their shoe or, as Smith discovered, folds over in a yoga pose.
Central vertigo is less common and occurs in people who are experiencing a problem with the central nervous system, such as vestibular migraines (a type of migraine defined by extreme dizziness) or stroke.
With so many different causes of vertigo, the treatment options are equally diverse. “That’s why getting the diagnosis right is especially important,” says Fif
