What is "vertigo"?
Vertigo is a phenomenon that occurs where a patient feels like they are spinning or the room is spinning. But it is their connection with Mother Earth. This is all due to the vestibular system, which is essentially your balancing system. The peripheral part of that is in your ear. That's the labyrinth. The central part of it is in your brain stem. It is a closed circuit. So any part of that, if it is interrupted, will give you a feeling of dizziness and light-headedness. All dizziness, all light-headedness, all vertigo is vestibular. It maybe for other reasons. For instance, if you have decreased cardiac output, because you have some irregular rhythm, your vestibular system may not be getting enough blood, so you'll be light-headed. If you interrupt that, and the most common reason for that is an infection, an injury to your head could do it. But usually it's a viral infection of some sort. As you get older, it could be blood vessel changes, you could have arterial sclerosis or high blood pressure, those can produce vertigo. There is a vertigo that occurs after that, because don't forget, it starts in the labyrinth and then it goes into the brain. So you could have it in your brain. So, for instance, vertigo in an MS patient is due to it occurring in the brain, not in the labyrinth. If you have a stroke in that area, it's going to be in the brain. The symptoms are the same, the one big difference is most of the time, when it's peripheral, you have a positional component to it. So, if you move your head a certain way you get dizzy or you get vertigo. If you look under the bed, you get dizzy, or you get vertigo. If you stand up quickly, you're going to get it. That can occur with central vertigo, but it's less likely. So, one of the things we want to know when a person has vertigo is, is it positional. If they lie still, are they still having vertigo? And if they don't have it, it's probably going to be peripheral. About 90% or 95% of all vertigo is from the ear.
