Associated symptoms

Headaches in connection with dizziness are not a rare symptom of a cervical syndrome. Muscle tension in the neck and shoulder area can cause pronounced headaches. The cause is often that the muscle tension irritates the meninges, which are very highly energized and react with pain symptoms.

On the other hand, headaches with dizziness can also be caused by a circulatory disorder. Even minor malpositions and tension in the area of the cervical vertebrae can impair the blood supply to the brain and sensory organs, which can trigger headaches or even migraine attacks. The therapy of these symptoms consists of a combination of physiotherapy to relax and strengthen the neck muscles, as well as massage and drug treatment to relieve pain and relax the muscles.The symptom dizziness in the cervical spine syndrome is often accompanied by insecurity of gait or a disturbed sense of position in the room.

The dizziness increases during movements or after a prolonged tense head posture and pain in the neck area often occurs in parallel. Dizziness caused by a cervical spine syndrome can last only a few minutes or can last for several hours. Certain sensory and nerve cells transmit information from the muscles and tendons in the shoulder and neck area to the organs of equilibrium.

Whenever the position or posture of the muscles changes, the brain can regulate balance and spatial orientation. Tension in the neck muscles, slipped discs in the cervical spine or other triggers of the cervical spine syndrome can disturb the exchange of information between the sensory cells and the organs of equilibrium, resulting in dizziness. The diagnosis of vertigo triggered by a cervical spine syndrome is in most cases an exclusion diagnosis, since many other causes of vertigo symptoms must first be clarified.

The therapy for vertigo can vary greatly depending on the cause. Relaxation of tension in the shoulder and neck muscles usually improves the vertigo symptoms within a short time. Anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving medications in combination with physiotherapeutic exercises, acupuncture, neural therapy or massages can also lead to an improvement of the dizziness caused by a cervical syndrome.

Cervical spine syndrome and dizziness

The consequences of a cervical spine syndrome can be very complex. Typical complaints are mainly sore throat and neck, vision problems, headaches and dizziness. Although less frequently, nausea is also described in some cases.

In many cases this is a consequence of dizziness. It is also possible that the nausea is a vegetative reaction of the body to the pain, this often occurs with strong or long-lasting headaches. Since the dizziness symptoms in particular are difficult to treat, a therapy for nausea in the cervical spine syndrome starts by eliminating the pain.

This can be done with the help of painkillers such as paracetamol or ibuprofen. Weak opioids such as tramadol or tilidine should be used with caution, as they carry the risk of further increasing the nausea. Antiemetics (drugs to combat nausea) such as vomex (dimenhydrinate) or vergentan (alizapride) are available in any case to take targeted action against nausea.

Visual disturbances are pathological changes in optical perception. Visual disturbances can manifest themselves, for example, by flickering eyes, reduced visual acuity, visual field restrictions or double images. In the cervical spine syndrome, visual disturbances sometimes occur in combination with a migraine attack.

In addition to severe headaches, flashes of light or flickering of the eyes can occur. The visual disturbances that occur in a cervical spine syndrome are usually caused by circulatory disorders in the brain, for example by a narrowing of an artery in the cervical vertebrae. Two small arteries vertebraliae pass through a bony channel in the cervical spine on the right and left side and supply the brain with oxygen-rich blood.

In a cervical spine syndrome with a narrowing of one of the two arteries, extreme head rotations in particular can lead to circulatory disorders and thus to a reduced supply of blood to the brain, which triggers the visual disturbances. A slipped disc in the area of the cervical spine can also cause visual disturbances in addition to many different symptoms (such as paralysis of the arms, numbness or tingling). Basically, visual disorders in the cervical spine syndrome are a rather rare symptom and occur especially in psychic stress situations.

Swallowing difficulties can certainly be a symptom of the cervical spine syndrome. For this reason, a cervical spine problem should always be excluded in cases of swallowing difficulties. On the one hand, a problem-free act of swallowing requires a functioning skeleton so that the jawbone, for example, can move freely.

If the cervical spine has been altered by an accident, incorrect posture or wear and tear (degeneration), the jaw and jaw joint may also be altered in position, making swallowing difficult or even painful.Furthermore, in the context of a cervical spine syndrome, bony offshoots (osteophytes) can emanate from the cervical spine and cause swallowing problems. These growths on the vertebral bodies can mechanically constrict the esophagus. In addition, inflammatory processes in the cervical spine can also cause swelling of the surrounding tissue, which can lead to a mechanical limitation of swallowing.

In some cases, these spurs are also perceived by patients as foreign body sensations. Another possibility for swallowing difficulties in combination with sudden neck pain and neck stiffness could be tendon calcification of the muscle running directly in front of the cervical spine (M. longus colli). This tendon calcification can occur in the course of a cervical spine syndrome.

Calcification of the tendon is accompanied by an inflammatory process. This inflammation can spread to the pharyngeal muscles, which are of great importance for the swallowing process. This can cause muscle cramps, but also pain in the throat during swallowing.

The list of symptoms that can be triggered by the cervical spine syndrome is quite long. Besides sore throat and neck, dizziness and headaches, the so-called myogeloses are also very typical symptoms of the cervical syndrome. This is a circumscribed hardening of the muscles.

Common colloquial terms are hard tension or muscle callosity. They manifest themselves as pressure-painful, olive-sized hardenings running along the grain direction of the muscle and are usually found in muscle areas that are under a lot of stress, such as the straight back muscles. Due to the pain caused by the cervical spine syndrome, patients often adopt unnatural relieving postures of the shoulder girdle and cervical spine area.

As a reaction to this incorrect strain, myogeloses can also form here. They are usually first treated with massages and physiotherapy exercises. In addition, or if the therapy is not successful, painkillers or muscle relaxants (drugs to relax the muscles) can also be used.

Heat therapy with red light or warm pillows and compresses is also helpful. The phenomenon that the blood pressure drops when a chiropractor adjusts a cervical vertebra has been known for a long time. However, it has taken a while to find out how high blood pressure (hypertension) can occur in a cervical spine syndrome.

In the meantime, it has been found that the neck muscles are connected to an area of the brain that exercises a control function on blood pressure, breathing and heartbeat. For example, tension in the shoulder and neck muscles in a cervical spine syndrome can send unusual signals to this area of the brain and thus influence the blood pressure. The neck muscles play an important role in assessing the position of the body in space.

Even small changes in posture are transmitted from the neck muscles to the brain. If there is a cervical spine syndrome, the communication between the brain and the neck muscles is disturbed and misinformation is transmitted. For this reason, the cervical spine syndrome can lead to symptoms and complaints such as dizziness, headaches and high blood pressure.

In addition, chronic pain in the neck muscles of the cervical spine syndrome leads to increased stress for the entire body. Stress manifests itself in humans through restlessness, sleep disorders, sweating and also through an increase in blood pressure. In many cases, a normalization of the blood pressure can be achieved by treating the cause of the cervical spine syndrome without having to take blood pressure-lowering medication.

In many cases, treatment of the cervical spine syndrome alone, in combination with physiotherapeutic exercises, massages or heat therapy, leads to an improvement in the symptoms of high blood pressure. Since high blood pressure can have numerous causes, a thorough examination by a doctor should always be carried out. In most cases (about 95%), high blood pressure is a so-called essential hypertension, which means that in these cases no direct cause for high blood pressure can be identified.

Various symptoms can be associated with a cervical spine syndrome. These mainly include headaches and neck pain, as well as dizziness, ringing in the ears and numbness in the upper extremities. In addition, the cervical spine syndrome is often associated with symptoms of other organ systems.These include the lungs, the digestive organs and the heart.

Although there is no specialist literature or current studies on this subject, a connection between symptoms of the heart, such as heart stumbling (extrasystole), and a cervical spine syndrome is not unreasonable. The nerve fibers of the autonomic nervous system, consisting of the sympathetic and parasympathetic parts, run along the spinal column. This system controls – independent of conscious influence – bodily functions such as blood circulation, gastrointestinal peristalsis, respiration and also heart function.

The nerve responsible for supplying most of the internal organs (nervus vagus) runs through an opening in the skull on both sides along the carotid arteries and later the esophagus in the direction of the chest. It is quite conceivable that chronic tension of the cervical musculature can lead to irritation of the vagus nerve and thus to occasional heart stumbling. The nerves of the sympathetic nervous system, the second part of the autonomic nervous system, also run close to the spinal column.

The nerves that control heart function accumulate in the area of the cervical spine to form a nerve plexus and can therefore be irritated or injured in the course of a cervical spine syndrome due to malpositions and blockages of the cervical vertebrae or a disc prolapse of one or more cervical vertebrae. This can disrupt the sympathetic control in a cervical spine syndrome. Under normal circumstances, the sympathetic nervous system ensures that the heart beats faster and more strongly, for example when under stress.

If these nerves are irritated by injuries to the cervical spine, it can cause the nerves leading to the heart to give the wrong signals. As a result, heart palpitations, heart stumbling or even rhythm disturbances can occur. The recurring heart complaints are to be treated primarily by treating the cause, in this case the cervical spine syndrome.

In the case of cervical spine syndrome, some people occasionally have numb fingers as an additional symptom. Both or only one hand may be affected. In addition, not all fingers of one hand are usually affected to the same extent.

The cause of the symptom is that in the cervical spine syndrome the nerve roots emerging from the spinal cord in the area of the cervical spine can be irritated. Many of these nerve paths run to the arms and ultimately to the fingertips. Among other things, they conduct sensations from the fingers back through the spinal cord to the brain, where they are perceived.

Irritation in this way can cause sensations like numb fingers. However, since another cause such as a herniated disc or nerve entrapment in the hand can also be responsible for these complaints, a medical examination should be carried out in case of doubt. This topic might also be of interest to you:

Carpal tunnel syndrome

The cervical spine syndrome, like many other chronic diseases, is in many ways related to the psyche.

Many patients who suffer from a chronic disease are diagnosed from the medical side with a psychological cause of their complaints. This is mainly due to the fact that a physical cause of the cervical spine syndrome is often difficult or even impossible to determine and that various treatment methods are not sufficiently effective. This is associated with great frustration both for the treating physician and above all for the patients, as they feel that they are not taken seriously.

Nevertheless, the cervical spine syndrome can indeed have a psychosomatic background. Our (often unconscious) mental state often has a greater influence on our physical well-being than we would like to admit. Thus, a psychologically stressful situation of any kind can lead to tension in the neck and neck area, which in turn triggers the typical symptoms of the cervical spine syndrome. You can read more about this under:

Cervical spine syndrome – effects and consequences