Viral Infections—Dizziness and Vertigo

When you’re dizzy, you may feel lightheaded, woozy, or disoriented. If you feel like you or the room are spinning, you have vertigo. These feelings may make you lose your balance.

Dizziness can have many different causes. A sudden drop in blood pressure or being dehydrated can make you dizzy. Many people feel lightheaded if they get up too quickly from sitting or lying down. Certain medicines and problems with your inner ear may cause dizziness. So can motion sickness. Sometimes dizziness can be a symptom of other disorders.

As people get older, they may have more health problems and take more medicines. This makes them more likely to have problems with dizziness and balance.

Dizziness usually gets better by itself or is easily treated. If you are dizzy often, you should see your health care provider to find the cause.

NIH: National Institutes of Health

• Benign positional vertigo (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Benign positional vertigo — aftercare (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Dizziness (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Dizziness and vertigo — aftercare (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Electronystagmography (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Epley maneuver (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Labyrinthitis (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Vertigo-associated disorders (Medical Encyclopedia)

Viruses are very tiny germs. They are made of genetic material inside of a protein coating. Viruses cause familiar infectious diseases such as the common cold, flu and warts. They also cause severe illnesses such as HIV/AIDS, smallpox, and Ebola.

Viruses are like hijackers. They invade living, normal cells and use those cells to multiply and produce other viruses like themselves. This can kill, damage, or change the cells and make you sick. Different viruses attack certain cells in your body such as your liver, respiratory system, or blood.

When you get a virus, you may not always get sick from it. Your immune system may be able to fight it off.

For most viral infections, treatments can only help with symptoms while you wait for your immune system to fight off the virus. Antibiotics do not work for viral infections. There are antiviral medicines to treat some viral infections. Vaccines can help prevent you from getting many viral diseases.

• ECHO virus (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Enterovirus D68 (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Hand-foot-mouth disease (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Herpangina (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Molluscum contagiosum (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Parainfluenza (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Roseola (Medical Encyclopedia)
• Zika virus disease (Medical Encyclopedia)