Symptoms

The “illusory movement” of the environment, which is perceived by the patient as dizziness, leads to fear of falling and possible injury consequences that may result. Anyone who has ever travelled on a ship in a rough sea knows the effect of constant swaying. Nausea and vomiting as well as sweating and palpitations are typical symptoms that the dizziness brings along.

Accompanying Symtoms

Dizziness can be accompanied by various symptoms. These include among others:

Nausea
Headaches
Visual disorders

Nausea and dizziness often occur together. A sudden severe attack of dizziness with nausea without other symptoms may indicate the failure of the vestibular organ and is a reason to visit the clinic immediately.

However, if no cause can be found in the organ of balance, neurological examinations are performed. This is because dizziness and nausea can also have their cause in the brain. Bacterial or viral infections, brain stem infections, tumors and inflammations can be the cause.

But also a phobic dizziness without physical cause is conceivable. The cause here is psychological in nature. Such vertigo attacks often occur in the context of anxiety and panic disorders.

They are more common in public places, but their nature and rhythm vary considerably from patient to patient. For such psychological causes, psychotherapy and possibly antidepressants are the therapy of choice. However, dizziness and nausea are not always an expression of a serious illness.

There are situations in which they occur more frequently, for example during pregnancy or the menopause.During pregnancy, nausea and dizziness are more common in the first three months. The menopause can also be accompanied by these unpleasant symptoms. Most often, however, the so-called rotational vertigo is accompanied by nausea and vomiting.

This is usually a dizziness with vestibular cause. This means that the dizziness is due to damage to the vestibular apparatus (organ of balance) of the inner ear. The most common causes here are benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV) and travel kineticosis.

Paroxysmal positional vertigo is a disorder of the organ of equilibrium in which tiny crystals, the so-called archways, of the vestibular apparatus are irritated and thus cause the vertigo. This also occurs when lying down and is accompanied by nausea and vomiting. Everyone has probably experienced travel kinetic disease at least once in their life.

Unusual and above all curvy movements such as driving a car, flying or travelling by boat can strongly irritate the inner ear. Since it is difficult to follow these movements with the eyes, discrepancies occur in the brain, which then lead to a disturbed perception of stimuli. The result is dizziness with nausea and vomiting.

Headaches are a rather unspecific symptom. They can have many causes, ranging from everyday things like stress or a flu-like infection to malignant diseases like cancer. Headaches are often associated with a feeling of light-headedness or dizziness.

A common cause of headaches and dizziness is migraine attacks. Migraine is a neurological disorder with regular headache attacks. It is accompanied by symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, photophobia (sensitivity to light) and dizziness.

Children with migraines are particularly prone to dizzy spells. Other causes of dizziness with headaches are malignant diseases of the brain, i.e. brain tumors. These are space-occupying processes that can trigger neurological disorders such as impaired vision, headaches, dizziness or even nausea.

Other space-consuming processes such as intracranial bleeding (e.g. subarachnoid hemorrhage) or water retention in the head (hydrocephalus) can also cause such symptoms. Traumatic injuries to the head and cervical spine also lead to headaches and dizziness. Infectious diseases, such as influenza or gastrointestinal infections, can also cause headaches and dizziness, depending on the severity of their course.

This does not have to be the case, however. Meningitis or severe inflammation of the middle and inner ear can also be possible causes. Finally, there are of course diseases of the vestibular apparatus (organ of equilibrium) that exhibit such symptoms.

As a rule, however, dizziness without headache predominates here. It can be seen that the causes can be very diverse, as can the therapy. Our eyes and the orientation in space or our balance are closely related to each other.

For this reason, symptoms such as dizziness and impaired vision can often occur together. Dizziness can often be associated with visual disturbances. The reason for this is, for example, a clouding of the lens, also called cataract, which usually occurs with increasing age. We therefore recommend that you also read the following articles:

Dizziness and visual disorders
Shingle in old age