Resolved question:
I am in a state of despair and needs medical attention at the earliest. Sorry, if I am becoming so descriptive. I have been suffering from dizziness from the last 9 months. It started all of a sudden when I was eating out. I simply fell fainted and started developing dizziness from that day. Even after fainting, I drove home without any problem except that dizziness. Now I feel some movement inside head, along with a swimming sensation. It is something like a vertiginous dizziness. At times it develops nausea and I will be unable to do anything. Now-a-days, I feel agrophobic and anxiety to certain extend. I went to my GP and started taking antibiotics, medicines as Betahistine, Prochloperazine and Diazepam for sinus infection. But they don't seem to help me now. I consulted this with a neurologist and he told me that this is chronic hyperventilation, without doing any confirmatory tests. That makes me even more tensed. I haven't got a hope of recovery. So I went to the ENT man. MRI scan done there showed that my balance is a little bit aligned to the right. It also states that I have some sort hyper ventilate disorders. Now my question is, can over anxiety cause these problems? Or am I a victim of chronic hyperventilation? I hate to believe so. Any help please.
Submitted:
4 Days
Category:
Sexologist
Hello. Thanks for writing to us. I guess you are having a difficult time with all these symptoms. Let me try to make some suggestions The first thing is the duration of dizziness. The long duration suggests me of some clinical pathology associated. Dizziness is a condition characterized with some imbalance between the body and spatial perception of the surroundings. The structures involved in this are inner ears, eyes, muscles, and nervous system. Dizziness can be physiological when there is decreased blood supply to brain as in dehydration, starving etc. Anxiety on the other hand has a definite relation to syncopal attacks. Also you have mentioned that you are afraid of open spaces (agarophobic). This also results in syncope by adding to your anxiety disorder. As you have stated that you suffered from sinusitis, there is a pretty much chance that the infection from your sinus could spread to your inner ear resulting in these episodes. Chronic hyperventilation results in dizziness in 25- 30% of the cases. I would like to suggest a simple test, which is a gold standard for the diagnosis of hyperventilation. This should be done when you are not experiencing any of the above symptoms. Make sure you have an attendant beside and breathe rapidly for 2 minutes. If it triggers any of the symptoms that you had in dizziness, then we can arrive at the diagnosis of chronic hyperventilation. I recommend you to consider the following 1)Walk regularly in the mornings for atleast 30 minutes. 2)Drink plenty of water and have balanced diet to maintain the blood pressure. 3)Avoid places you are afraid of 4)Regularly practice some breathing exercises which not only help in increasing lung function but also in reducing the occurrence of sinus infection. 5)Try to reduce your respiratory rate atleast 2 times a day, where the no. of breaths per minute should not exceed 5.This helps in conditioning your respirations. Above all, I request you to make an appointment with your ENT specialist for the proper management of sinusitis. Hope this helps.