Saw a doctor recently from feeling nauseated and what I thought was dizziness, but when doctor asked if it was dizziness, lightheadedness, vertigo or an imbalanced sense of disequilibrium, I now have more questions than answers. I think I left dizzier than when I went in from the confusion!
In: 9
Not a doctor, but in general language terms:
“Dizzyness” is when you feel like the world is spinning or tilting around you, like you just finished spinning in circles. You might literally see the room spinning before your eyes,, or it might feel like your brain is spinning around inside your skull.
“Lightheadedness” is when the blood runs out of your head and you get a whooshy, distant feeling. Your vision might start to go black around the edges and your hearing might get muffled or start ringing.
“Vertigo” is when you feel like you’re falling, or like something is rushing around you.
“Imbalanced” is just when you can’t get your body to stay upright, like your sense of which way is up has gone wacky and you keep accidentally tipping.
Colloquially, there is no hard distinction. ‘Dizziness’ is a bit of a catch-all term.
More specifically:
* Vertigo describes the sensation of spinning (like the feeling you get when turning on your own axis for too long)
* imbalancedness/disequilibrium describes the sensation of not being able to control your balance properly or your sense of balance being tilted in one particular direction
* Presyncope/being lightheaded is the sensation you might get prior to fainting – a sense of numbness, gray-outs, etc.
These all may sound relatively similar, but can have drastically different biological causes – for instance, vertigo is often caused by an issue with a certain fluid stored within your inner air that grants you your sense of balance, while dizziness typically points to dangerously low blood pressure and/or oxygen levels in the brain.
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