Sinusitis and Dizziness
If you are suffering from sinusitis you have a number of very uncomfortable symptoms. One of those symptoms can be dizziness. Sinusitis and dizziness have long been linked together as cause and effect for a potentially dangerous condition. There is a good reason why sinusitis could be the root cause of your dizziness, but like most medical problems it is far from the only cause.
Dizziness can manifest itself in many ways. People who experience dizziness give very different descriptions of what they are feeling. Most people call a number of different sensations being dizzy but it might not be the case at all.
The most severe sensation that is commonly called dizziness is complete loss of balance and direction accompanied with nausea and vomiting. This would be vertigo where you feel the room around you is spinning and you feel like you are loosing your balance.
If you can remember what it was like when you were young and on the playground carousel that your friend was spinning faster and faster and how it felt when you stopped, that would be like this type of dizziness. When you stop everything else seems to still be spinning.
This type of dizziness is very dangerous and would require you to lay down till the dizziness passes. Otherwise you would run the risk of falling and injuring yourself.
There is another sensation that many people mistake for dizziness. This is lightheadedness. This most often occurs when you stand up quickly after kneeling on the ground. Usually this is just your body trying to compensate for the sudden change in position. It most often has to do with differences in blood pressure and lasts only a few seconds. This is not really dizziness that would be caused by sinusitis.
Sinusitis can be the root cause of vertigo because the respiratory system of which your sinuses are a part is closely tied to your inner ear systems. It is your inner ear which plays a major role in your brain’s ability to orient yourself. It is the signals from the inner ear that help your brain determine up down and sideways sensations. If something interferes with the inner ears ability to send the correct signals to your brain, your brain has trouble determining location and motion and you start to feel dizzy.
Why would sinusitis affect the inner ear? One is part of the respiratory system and the other is your auditory system. How can an infection in the sinus prevent the ear from working correctly?
The answer in a nutshell is, they are really very closely related both in their physical makeup and in their location. The very same mucus membrane lining found in the sinuses is also found in the inner ear. When bacteria infects the mucus membranes of the sinus, the same mucus membrane in the ear is very susceptible to becoming infected too.
In addition to sharing the same type of membrane, the ear and the respiratory system are connected by the eustachian tube. This tube allows mucus to drain from the ear just as mucus drains from the sinuses. It is very common for the eustachian tube to become swollen at the same time that the sinus membranes become swollen during a sinus infection. When that happens the mucus from the ear no longer can drain and can become infected in the same manor as the sinuses.
When you develop an infection in the inner ear, that can disrupt the function of the balance mechanisms in the ear. When it becomes dysfunctional enough, you start to experience dizziness. The dizziness can be very disabling and may require bed rest.
Treating this symptom is really just treating the sinus infection itself. The usual treatment of antibiotics and decongestants would be called for. As the sinus infection begins to heal and the membranes become less swollen the same should occur about the ear and the dizziness should cease.
If your sinusitis is successfully treated but the dizziness remains it could indicate another cause for the dizziness. This is something that you will need to address with your doctor so he can start looking for other causes.
