Balance disorders

Balance disorders, dizziness or vertigo can have many different causes.

BPPV (Benigne Paroxysmal Position Vertigo) can be diagnosed in 15% of patients with dizziness. This is a temporary disturbance of the functioning of the equilibrium organ (labyrinth) because the hearing stones (ear crystals) are in the wrong place.

At 25% other otologic diseases, such as Meniere's disease. are responsible..

Chronic hyperventilation and neck complaints (e.g. whiplash) can also be a cause of dizziness.

No clear cause can be found in 30% of patients with dizziness complaints.

When there are no otologic causes, the problem can sometimes be found central.

The brains receive all kinds of stimuli from our body that help them to form an image of the position of our body in the environment. For this they receive not only information from the equilibrium organ, but also the muscles of the neck, the limbs, the trunk, etc.

When we move, our eyes adjust automatically because a reflex arc in the brainstem, based on information from the labyrinth, is activated. This system ensures that we can read a text when we move our heads. On the other hand, when the text itself moves, reading becomes seriously more difficult. The reflex arc is not activated because our equilibrium organ does not experience any changes in the position of the head.

When a disruption of our equilibrium organ occurs, the reflex arc will also be disturbed. Fortunately, our brains are an adaptive system that allows them to compensate for the missing or wrong information. Unfortunately, this compensating sometimes goes wrong, so dizziness can become chronic.