What you need to know about dizziness and vertigo in Chinese medicine:
What are dizziness and vertigo?
Still not clear? Never mind, because in Chinese medicine dizziness and vertigo are treated much the same way, with similar causes, though it’s often your other sensations that help decide which particular syndrome is your problem.
Once you’ve got the syndrome(s) diagnosed, there’s usually a straightforward solution, both for treatment and for what YOU can do, or avoid doing yourself, and to ameliorate your condition. (Oh! And Yes! You could have more than one syndrome in the mix.)
There are four main syndromes in Chinese medicine that may cause, or explain, dizziness and vertigo. Actually, there’s a fifth one too, which could be important.
Any other causes in Chinese medicine? Yes, two! One is trauma, mentioned above under 5/, when you’ve had a severe bang to the head; the other is internal Liver wind, causing severe dizziness and vertigo. Internal Liver wind is more likely in older people arising from decline and inner deficiency. It’s often causes stroke and can be lethal. We’ve got a page on it here. You need immediate help and there’s not much you can do about it except get to hospital – though immediate acupuncture can ameliorate things if your acupuncturist know what to do.
The other four causes of dizziness and vertigo mentioned you can do something about.
Excess Liver Yang often comes with a strong headache, frequently one-sided: sometimes classified as a migraine.
But it doesn’t have to be a migraine to qualify. With this syndrome you are often sensitive to bright light or to loud noises and the pain can be strongly throbbing or pulsating. Overall, you are over-sensitive and may be irritable, touchy or just plain ‘cross’.
Click here to find out much more about Excess Liver Yang.
Why do you get Liver Yang excess? Two main causes, one being deficient Kidney Yin, the other (mental) depression, which often arises with Qi stagnation. The former gets more likely from people who work too much without adequate rest, and the latter comes from stress and, well, life in general: we all get it, including me: certainly in the past – now not so much. (Though fortunately stress doesn’t seem to cause me headaches.)
How do you know if Damp Phlegm is your syndrome? Because it causes a heavy feeling, as if wading through fog, inability to think clearly, lack of appetite, even nausea, and dull, heavy headache, as well as that unsteady or wobbly sensation.
Damp Phlegm arises when you have a weak Spleen (click here to look that up, there’s too much on it to put here.)
Briefly, your Spleen is weakened by worry, over-thinking, wrong foods and lack of exercise, to name just a few. Over time you can often improve these factors yourself – certainly you can help yourself by cutting down or cutting out the wrong foods, and taking more exercise, but in the short term you’ll almost certainly need treatment to start the improvement. If you’re a worrier, being told not to worry doesn’t really help! But still, if you worry less, probably the world won’t end.
Often, stressing over worries, and general anxiety, make you more susceptible to this form of dizziness and vertigo, though it can also lead to the next one listed below, being Blood deficiency from Spleen and Stomach qi deficiency.
What are the wrong foods? They include sweet, creamy and uncooked or raw foods. (Yes! All those healthy salads might not, for you, be the right foods!) So foods containing milk, yogourt, cream, ice-cream and similar are banned. Also anything which tastes sweet straightaway when tasted, including sugar and sugar substitutes, artificial sweeteners, (such as advantame, aspartame, cyclamate, saccharin and sucralose) and sweeteners often regarded as safer such as erythritol, maltitol, lactitol, mannitol, sorbitol, stevia and xylitol. The same goes for honey, maple syrup, and any other plant-based syrup. And alcohol – yes: sorry!
But are you going to take any notice of that list?
I doubt it! And anyway, you may argue, even Chinese herbal prescriptions nearly always have a very mild sweetener included; to make them more palatable and to ‘assist’ Spleen Qi by ‘harmonising’ the prescription so your Spleen qi digests it better. (Usually the sweetener is either a kind of liquorice or a special Chinese date).
But if you are used to sugar or artificial sweeteners, you would hardly taste the effect of the liquorice or dates used in Chinese herbal prescriptions, because they are so mild in comparison. Sugar and sweeteners cause huge amounts of disease, especially in developed countries. We see this in the proportion of the population who are grossly overweight, but sometimes sugars cause health problems, sometimes hidden for years, in the underweight too. Not only does it lead to weight gain (often classified as a form of phlegm in Chinese medicine) but depression (BMC Psychiatry, 2024; 24: 110) and poor sleep (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2019; doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqz275).
It’s also linked to lower fertility, particularly when taken as regular soda drinks (Source: Epidemiology, 2018; doi: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000000812).
So a little sweet, sometimes, is OK. But not with everything. And remember, many snacks contain sugars or sweeteners, including potato crisps, and of course, most sweeties. (Sweeties? All sugar – or sweeteners!)
Unfortunately, even the best treatment may be nullified by eating the wrong foods in excess. So food is important if you want to avoid Damp Phlegm as a cause of your dizziness and vertigo.
Trying to reduce dependence on sweeteners, whether from sugar or artificial sweeteners? Get some acupuncture, which can help improve the function of your digestion (your Spleen and Stomach energies) so you absorb more sugars from proper foods in your diet and don’t crave them after meals in the form of chocolate, sweeties or snacks.
Also, remember what Benjamin Franklin (1796-1790) said:
“To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals”
I’m pretty sure he said that long before obesity became such a problem in North America.
I once had a patient who must have been in her late twenties. A really lovely girl, friendly and smiley: but for her life was not good because she weighted over 25 stone – almost 160 Kg.
She worked for a national institution in London and couldn’t lose weight. She knew why too, because she couldn’t walk past a chocolate shop without buying some on her way to work.
By the time she got there she had eaten them all!
I treated her with acupuncture to improve her Spleen function. The next time she came she said she was amazed – she’d managed to walk past the chocolate shops. She started walking up the steps to her work on the 5th floor instead of taking the lift, and after the third treatment she began swimming again (she’d represented her school in her teens).
I only saw her a few more times but a year or two later there was a knock at the door and this vision of loveliness confronted me – vibrant, tanned and (well, not to mess around) sexy!
She was delighted when I didn’t at first recognise her. She was just back from honeymoon in the West Indies, and looking super, and now around 11 stone (70 Kg) which was about right for her physique. So acupuncture certainly helped her.
I tell you that story because she also suffered from faintness and wobbliness (though I don’t remember if she was was also dizzy), partly from a poor diet and partly because she was so overweight.
As her diet improved (less chocolate, more room for food: less weight, more agile) she got generally better and more positive about life. It was great to see!
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You can probably understand why these cause dizziness because, lacking enough healthy Blood, your brain won’t function properly and you’ll feel faint and uncertain: probably you’ll be more forgetful too and lack presence of mind.
With lack of Qi, there isn’t enough energy to pump the blood up to your head so you get postural dizziness – when you feel dizzy on standing up too fast from sitting or lying, or if tired, perhaps from lack of sleep or over-exertion.
There’s a crossover here too, because without enough Qi, your Stomach won’t work properly so even if you eat the best foods, your digestive system won’t turn it into healthy, nourishing blood.
Why might you get Deficient Blood? It could happen from eating a poor selection of foods, in other words a poor diet: not enough vegetables, protein, good oils and carbohydrate. Or even with the best diet, because you have a weak Spleen (see above under Damp Phlegm). Or simply because you don’t know how best to eat food. (The right foods, but never too much or too little at a time, and always well chewed and preferably cooked and eaten warm, when you are relaxed and not working or exercising. And make sure not to eat too close to bedtime because a big meal just before trying to sleep will disturb your sleep and won’t be properly digested.)
This can make you confused and sensitive to light, too. Or it takes you time to collect your wits, first thing! You might get this too, if you’ve been over-working, not getting enough sleep and ‘stretched’. This could make you forget your surroundings for a few paces as you walk along: almost a petit mal, it may seem, though probably isn’t unless it happens repeatedly, when you should definitely see your doctor.
Other causes of Blood deficiency causing dizziness and vertigo include
Fortunately, good treatment, such as acupuncture, can often improve this, assuming you have time to convalesce, can rest lots, and get good food, which you chew well.
If you feel a bit faint or dizzy when rising first thing in the morning, you’ve possibly got some Blood or Qi deficiency. At that time of day, it’s more likely to be Blood deficiency. Make sure you get a good breakfast, and chew it well! For what to eat, see our recipe for porridge. At any rate, eat some protein before going out.
Jing is a big subject and covers your inherited constitution and immune system. Your Jing gradually runs down as you age or are weakened by severe trauma, chronic illness or – in women, by having too many babies close together, or many years of debilitatingly heavy periods, or – in men, by loss of too much sperm. Overwork and exhaustion contribute to Kidney Jing deficiency, but the main cause is age.
Deficient jing symptoms becomes more common as you grow older. It can lead to dizziness and vertigo in the elderly.
Healthy, vibrant jing facilitates strong Qi and Blood, and the energy for vigorous Spleen Qi. So in a way, jing deficiency can be an indirect cause of any kind of dizziness or vertigo, including the three other main causes listed above.
The Chinese have been searching for thousands of years for the solution to deficiency of Jing, and although there are many ways to slow its decline, they have not yet discovered the magic elixir of life. But acupuncture and herbs can both help.
Other pages to look at:
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With Heart and Kidney Yang deficiency, you’ve overstressed your body’s ability to recover from over-exertion and cold.
