Is there any minor illness that causes dizziness?

Factual Questions
1

While this is about something that happened to me, I’m not asking for advice. Two days ago, I went to bed a little bit dizzy. I woke up dizzy and with a minor headache, took excedrin and the headache went away. The dizziness continued to get work until about 3/4ths of the way through the day when I was having trouble walking a few yards (I was at home at that point). By midnight it was totally gone.

Now normally I’d chalk it up to random fluke, but friends of mine had it happen too, and we didn’t talk to each other until AFTER the dizziness had passed, and it wasn’t suggestion like “oh, come to think of it I WAS a little dizzy today.” It was things like “huh… weird, I skipped class today because I was too dizzy to go.” So at least 5 or 6 people experienced mildly debilitating dizziness, independently, in the last few days, with few to no other symptoms.

So is there any transmissible illness that could cause dizziness and ONLY dizziness? I’m guessing that since it’s the end of summer in very hot Arizona we all just coincidentally ended up a bit dehydrated around the same time, but if there is some sort of virus or bacteria that can cause it (messes with inner ear balance or something) I’d be interested to know.

2

Sinus and ear infections will do it. Headaches and dizziness are common symptoms. I’ve never had the dizziness, but several severe sinus infections (oddly one may have saved my life), and repeated bouts of sinusitis. Any rapid change in air pressure, humidity, or temperature can bring on the headaches for me. That would explain a group reaction like that.

3

Mass Hysteria.

4

Maybe, but I’m not sure we all had a sinus infection at once, though it’s certainly possible. But if it can happen with rapid change in humidity and temperature it’s certainly possible.

Which is why I was clear to state it happened independently until I said something which got a bunch of “me toos”, we had no contact with each other for the 2-3 days it happened, and one friend reported she didn’t have it, but a couple of her friends did (and again, this was all after ours went away). I don’t think it could be psychogenic if I didn’t know anybody else had it until after mine went away.

5

I don’t think the change in conditions would cause it. There would have to be prior conditions made worse. But hot dry weather and dehydration could lead to sinusitis, inflammation of the sinuses.

As for mass hysteria, unless you have evidence that the others who claimed to have the same thing made such claims before your statement, then it’s still a possibility. Try meeting up with friends sometime and just mention how your throat has been scratchy lately. If you’re convincing, you could easily get at least one other person reporting the same symptom. I wouldn’t really call if hysteria, just something similar to confirmation bias. A lot of people have some minor ailment, something they might totally disregard, until hearing someone else report the same problem. That can then cause them to internally exagerrate their own symptoms.

6

Minor dehydration can cause dizziness.

7

Viral labyrinthitis. Although calling it dizziness might be a tad understating it. More like riding a rollercoaster while sitting perfectly still on your couch.

The first time I got it I was convinced I was dying. I went to the emergency room and they ended up giving me a CAT scan. I got it again about a year later and just toughed it out until it went away after six hours or so.

8

(re: mass hysteria)

Could the triggering incident have been something you were all at, prior to the onset of symptoms?

9

Could it be vertigo?

10

The doctor diagnosed me with benign positional vertigo. I heard it can be caused by low air pressure.

11

I get positional vertigo once or twice a year when having sinus congestion from allergies. It doesn’t even need to be an actual sinus infection. I just take Benadryl until it subsides. (The old style antihistamine of Benadryl “dries” out the problem more quickly than newer drugs.)

12

From what I understood to be vertigo, the diagnosis of which can be determined by a frustrating medical journey. I was very dizzy for a long time, and first was given a basic anti-symptomatic, whose name I forget, which did squat.

Then the trip to two hearing (inner-ear guys). Then, luckily because NYC has one of the vertigo labs(all sorts of table tumblers, among other things, while you’re wired up) at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary (they call it hospital now, I think), I did that scene, and came up empty. This went on for three months or so.

Not to be alarmist for your condition–to say the least:)–eventually I collapsed on the street, rolling against the side of a building, mindlessly saying “I’m not drunk,” and fell to the ground, holding on for dear life; I did not know if I would float up, I had no idea where gravity was. (I made it to the street but collapsed in the middle; not a single of the fast-moving cars nor many passers-bye came to help me.) With horrible fear of floating off to space, indeed, not knowing where up was, I crawled to the divider, and then about ten minutes later crawled (pulled myself) to the gutter. Someone then came, and carried me cross shouldered as i shuffled like a drunkard.

In later attacks, I simply had to be carried along the way an absolutely in able drunk is; a number of times people would not come to my aid, figuring I was just some drunk who couldn’t (at all) simply figure out where vertical was, and I just lay on the ground for dear life.

Well, kids, after CAT-scans and many neurologists later, I was diagnosed with ataxia. My brain in the motor area of the vestibular cerebellum, as I learned, was fucked, and “had visibly shrunk.”

It is often referred to as “the drunken sailor” disease. The worst attack I was two weeks in the hospital unable to sit up or use my arms functionally. Then it was about six weeks of rehab before I could walk without a walker, and then a cane.

Of course this has as much to do with OP as does, say, if he said I have a headache, and I reply, “well, have you considered it being a tumor?”

I’m just a little hammered and I felt like reminiscing and telling a medical story which I think/thought was interesting.

Carry on.

13

When teaching medical students the approach to “the dizzy patient”, the first (and most important) thing to clear up is what the person means by “dizzy”. You’d be surprised how different people mean different things when they use the term.

The three most common uses are:

  1. True vertigo - the patient feels he (or the environment) is spinning

  2. Lightheadedness - the feeling we all get sometimes when we stand up too fast, where things begin to ‘gray out’ and there is a sense that we may pass out

  3. Imbalance/clumsiness/weakness - this use of “dizzy” is most often made by the elderly when they explain how they felt before they fell

So, just to make it explicit, do you mean true vertigo? Do you feel as if you (or your environment) is spinning? If so, there are even more causes than the other posters in this thread have indicated. Yes, vertigo can result from a number of inner ear conditions such as labrynthitis, benign positional vertigo, and vestibular neuronitis. In fact, when the vertigo occurs in isolation, in the absence of other symptoms (see below), one of these three is, indeed, the likely cause.

If the vertigo tends to be episodic (over months or years) and is associated with tinnitus and/or hearing loss, then Ménière’s disease is a strong consideration. And, there are other diagnostic possibilities when true vertigo is associated with ‘ear symptoms’ such as ear pain, hearing impairment, discharge from the ear, and so forth.

On the other hand, true vertigo that is accompanied by various neurologic symptoms is most often due to a so-called “central cause”. Specifically, if there are associated symptoms such as double vision, facial numbness or drooping, trouble swallowing, slurring of speech, gross incoordination (i.e. ataxia), fainting, weakness in the arms or legs, (and others), the vertigo might then be a symptom of a lesion in the brainstem or cerebellum (and, very rarely, even in the temporal lobe (e.g. cite)). Common ‘lesions’ in this regard include the plaques of multiple sclerosis and tumors called gliomas. There are, of course, other possibilities as well.

(And, let’s not get started on the causes of ‘lightheadedness’ or, God forbid, 'imbalance/clumsiness/weakness).

14

I’ve felt transient vertigo along with severe sinus congestion a few times. It’s always a very freaky feeling. If I turned my head to the right to look at something, then stopped my head, everything felt like it kept moving for another second, which was really disconcerting. Standing up was next to impossible, so I spent the day on the couch, crawling to the bathroom as necessary. Luckily it doesn’t happen often (three times so far in my life), and when it does it’s over quickly (a day or so), so it’s not incapacitating.

Of course,** KarlGauss**'s post just made me all paranoid about Ménière’s disease because I also have tinnitus. No hearing loss, though, that I can tell, so I’m safe.

15

I should have mentioned that vertigo which is brought on by head movement or change in position is highly suggestive as being due to one of the three entities listed above.

And, with respect to “central causes” of vertigo (i.e. those with “lesions” in the brain stem and cerebellum, in particular), I somehow managed to omit stroke and transient ischemic attacks (TIA).

16

Many years ago I had a bout of dizziness that manifested itself only when I turned over while lying down. The room would spin for several seconds and then stop (unless I turned over again). Since there was chance of falling over, I didn’t see my doctor. Exactly 24 days later it went away as suddenly as it started. I have always assumed it was some kind of inner ear infection, although why it affected me only when lying down, I cannot speculate.

My wife had an instance of actual vertigo. Our doctor said something about “ear stones” and performed some kind of maneuver on her that involved hanging her head off his examining table and then manipulating her it in some special way. He even taught it to me in case it had to be repeated, but I’ve long since forgot it. Fortunately, his treatment worked. He was unable to explain why her ear stones had shifted.