I have dizziness and a headache. Are these migraine symptoms?

Question

Hi doctor,

I am 33 years old, female. I suffer from tachycardia (heart checked, everything is normal), anxiety, depression, and dizziness only when I am walking. I do not have dizziness when I am lying, and I am a smoker too. I have a headache often, but I cannot recognize if it is a migraine or not, and I recently had an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scan of my brain.

Can you please tell me your opinion about the result? This is the impression: T2 FLAIR (Fluid Attenuated Inversion Recovery) hyperintensity foci within the white matter in the centrum semiovale and near the vertex, which is more than expected, given the patient's age. The distribution is non-specific. Most of this is atypical for demyelination.

Kindly guide.

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to icliniq.com.

The tachycardia you are experiencing if the usual cardiac exam and diagnostics were already done and showed normal result may have been coming from anxiety. This should be well tolerated and cannot do you any harm. The dizziness and headaches should coincide with the same problem; whichever comes first will lead to the other symptom.

Dizziness basically comes from so many factors, like a low iron supply in the blood or a low red blood cell count. Other factors that can precipitate this are benign positional paroxysmal vertigo or simply BPPV (basically a condition coming from your middle ear).

Diagnosis entails having blood exams like your complete blood count (CBC) and otological exam using an otoscope to check for inflammation and infection of the ears, which is a fairly common problem with BPPV.

The exact mechanism of this is the head position that you need to identify so as to prevent this dizziness from recurring in certain positions. It would be helpful to take some Betahistine 16 mg tablets twice a day for this bout of dizziness. Headaches, on the other hand, could also be caused by many things, but the usual causes are myogenic in nature.

It can range from migraine headaches, cluster headaches, or tension headaches, and the treatment entails primarily a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) like Ibuprofen taken every eight hours, but remember to take this religiously without fail to keep the drug's potency to make it effective.

Migraines usually occur with a strong family history. If you have a family member who exhibits this kind of headache, then you also have it. Most of the time, they are precipitated by a stressful insult, whether it be from lack of sleep, skipping meals, or a tiresome job. It is helpful if you could identify this stressor so as to avoid it. It would definitely help you.

The MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) findings, T2 flair hyperintensities foci within the white matter in the centrum semiovale and near the vertex are incidental findings that do not correlate well with a disease.

These particular signals in the brain are most often seen also in normal individuals and do not cause any symptoms at all. To conclude, it is not important and will not cause you trouble. This all should help you best as your guide.

I hope this information helps.

Thank you.