Dizziness after standing may indicate brain disease!

If you get dizzy several minutes after standing up you may be at risk of a serious medical condition, new research from Harvard Medical School indicates.

Blood pressure problems are a nagging issue for many people across the USA, but don’t be too quick to ignore signs of something that may be even more risky.

Lead author of the study Christopher Gibbons, who works with Harvard Medical School in Boston and is also a Fellow with the American Academy of Neurology said “Our study was focused on delayed orthostatic hypotension, which results in the reduced blood pressure about three minutes after standing or sitting up”. The health problem is named orthostatic hypotension (OH), and other mankind are affected by slowed down orthostatic hypotension, which requires set up more often thee minutes of time after standing up.

Past research has shown that feeling dizzy or lightheaded after getting up is simply due to a drop in blood pressure because of dehydration. This might occur within 3 minutes of getting up or sitting down. About 5 to 10 percent in this age group had recorded orthostatic hypotension after 10 years.

Looking at the report critically, 54 percent of participants who had delayed orthostatic hypotension later on developed orthostatic hypotension, while 31 percent had bad brain diseases including Parkinson’s. The 10-year death rate for people who started out with DOH was 29%. And more than 50 percent of those who already have delayed hypotension are likely to have a more serious form of the disease and increased risk of death.

“Our findings suggest that more than half of people with the delayed form of this condition will go on to develop the more serious form of this disease”, Gibbons said. Medications that could affect blood pressure, such as diuretics, and antidepressants, were being taken by numerous people whose condition did not progress to the full condition.

For the study, researchers compiled over ten years of data from people suffering from varying forms of the disease.

Gibbons said limitations of the study included that it was a retrospective review of data collected earlier and that participants were all referred to a specialized center for tests of the autonomic nervous system and may not reflect the overall community.

‘Our findings may lead to earlier recognition, diagnosis and treatments of this condition and possibly other underlying diseases that may contribute to early death’.