Feeling dizzy from time to time is common, but frequent dizziness may sometimes point to another health problem. A study from Peking University suggests that people who experience dizziness or vertigo are more likely to also have migraine.
Dizziness is a broad term that can describe feeling lightheaded, unsteady or as if you might lose your balance. Vertigo is more specific and often feels as though you or the room around you is spinning or moving when it is not.
Migraine is also more than an ordinary headache. It is a brain-related condition that can cause severe or throbbing head pain, nausea, and increased sensitivity to light, sounds or smells.
Some people with migraine also develop problems with balance and movement. In a condition called vestibular migraine, dizziness and vertigo can be major symptoms and may sometimes occur even when there is little or no headache.
Researchers led by Tongxiang Diao examined the relationship between these symptoms in 708 nurses working at a large hospital. The participants were divided into groups based on whether they had no headache, migraine, or another type of headache.
Overall, 28.7% of the nurses reported headaches, while 13.3% met the study’s criteria for migraine. A total of 235 participants reported experiencing dizziness or vertigo.
When the researchers compared the groups, they found a strong connection between balance-related symptoms and headaches. People reporting vertigo were almost three times as likely to have migraine or another type of headache.
The link was even stronger for dizziness. Participants who experienced dizziness were more than eight times as likely to have migraine compared with people who did not report dizziness.
The findings may help explain why some people with migraine first seek medical care because they feel dizzy rather than because they have severe head pain. If doctors recognize the connection, they may be more likely to ask about migraine symptoms when evaluating repeated or unexplained dizziness.
This could be especially useful in cases of vestibular migraine. Because dizziness or balance problems can appear without a typical migraine headache, the condition may sometimes be overlooked or confused with disorders of the inner ear.
However, the study does not show that dizziness causes migraine or that every person who feels dizzy has migraine. Dizziness and vertigo have many possible causes, including inner-ear disorders, dehydration, low blood pressure, medication effects and other medical conditions.
The research also has important limits. It involved nurses from one hospital, so the results may not represent the wider population, and the study looked for an association between symptoms rather than proving that one directly causes the other.
The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Neuroscience. Led by Tongxiang Diao and colleagues, the research adds to growing evidence that migraine can affect much more than a person’s experience of head pain.
For people who repeatedly experience unexplained dizziness or vertigo, the findings offer another reason to discuss the symptoms with a health professional. A careful assessment can help identify whether migraine, an inner-ear problem or another condition may be responsible.
Understanding the connection could eventually help some people receive the right diagnosis sooner. It may also encourage doctors and patients to recognize dizziness as an important symptom that deserves attention, particularly when it happens repeatedly or appears alongside other signs of migraine.
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