![]() ![]() Your nervous system essentially goes into overdrive in these scenarios, Thiruganasambandamoorthy says, and your blood pressure drops suddenly, leading to lightheadedness. When you feel lightheaded because of dehydration-which includes symptoms like dry mouth and skin, dark-colored urine, and headaches-lying down resupplies the heart and the brain with blood, helping you to feel better pretty quickly, he says.Ī similar reaction can be triggered when your college roommate jumps out from behind the couch at your surprise birthday party. “Heat triggers a pathway in the nervous system that causes blood pressure to drop.” “It’s common in a hot room, like standing in church in the summer,” Thiruganasambandamoorthy says. ![]() Some people are simply predisposed to feeling lightheaded or even fainting when they get hot and sweaty and lose too much fluid. No matter what, always play it safe by seeking medical attention for any new symptoms, or ones that don’t resolve themselves. Here, 10 potential reasons you could feel lightheaded and why it happens. Still, it’s understandable to want to find answers, especially if this has become a regular thing for you. It’s tricky to know when fainting or lightheadedness is a cause for concern-even doctors often feel stumped. ( Dizziness, on the other hand, can include lightheadedness, but it also comes with the feeling that the room is spinning around you.) Some of these reasons are common and not worrisome, but others need more evaluation.”Įven if you don’t faint from it, that drop in blood pressure or heart rate can cause lightheadedness, that very specific yet hard to describe feeling that you might pass out. “We try to find out why the blood pressure or heart rate would go down. “The cause can stem from many different parts of the body, including a person’s blood pressure going down, heart rate going down, and from neurologic reasons independent of the heart,” he says. As for the rest, an underlying health condition could be to blame, and that could mean potentially serious health concerns down the road.įainting, no matter why it happens, is the result of a short period of time when the brain’s blood supply is decreased, explains Lawrence Phillips, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine in the cardiology division at New York University Langone Medical Center. Know this: The majority of people who have passed out are absolutely fine, says Venkatesh Thiruganasambandamoorthy, M.B.B.S., clinical epidemiologist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa. "We know from other research that people will talk about fatigue as something that they experience when they're feeling overstressed," says Bufka.Feeling faint is scary and can make you scramble to figure out why you feel lightheaded. "Exhaustion can be a symptom of many things," says Cyrus. In the meantime, Bufka and other experts say that there are things we can do now to fight the mental fog and exhaustion. "They may have struggled during the time of the challenges but generally come out OK on the other end." "We know that the majority of people tend to be resilient," says Lynn Bufka, a psychologist with the American Psychological Association. It's a normal reaction to a very abnormal year.Īnd while many people will likely continue to struggle with mental health symptoms in the long run, research on past mass traumas suggests that most people will recover once the coronavirus pandemic ends. But at the root of it are the stress and trauma of the past year, say Cyrus and other mental health experts. This kind of mental fog is real and can have a few different causes. Shots - Health News Pandemic's Emotional Hammer Hits Hard And many providers, like Cyrus, are feeling it themselves. are hearing similar complaints from people who weren't infected by the virus. While some people who have had COVID-19 report brain fog and fatigue as lingering symptoms of their infection - what's known as long COVID - mental health care providers around the U.S. 'All I want to do is stare at the ceiling.' " Others say they are more irritable. Some tell her they can "barely turn on the TV. Some patients tell Cyrus they've been making mistakes at work. They say things like, "It's just so hard to get out of bed" or "I've been misplacing things more often," she says. I don't feel like being active again."Įxhaustion is also one of the top complaints she hears from her patients these days. "I am taking a nap in between patients," says Cyrus, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins University. Kali Cyrus has struggled with periods of exhaustion. Feelings of exhaustion, irritability and mental fogginess are our bodies' normal response to an abnormal year of pandemic life. ![]()
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