I need to get more salt in my diet...

[mari4212]

...This is the third time in a row that I have come back from women's chorus having had a dizzy spell in class. I've talked with the director, we're going to try moving me up front and letting me sit on the edge of my seat if I start getting dizzy.

Darn it, I don't like my body copping out on me like this. I'm going to go back to eating more salt, it'll get my bp back up to something approaching normal.

Comments

[heylittleriver.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I hope you do get your BP back up. *doesn't want you feeling dizzy*

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

I ate something that held about 40% of my daily value's worth of salt in it, and I'm feeling better now. I'll go to sleep early tonight and be fine.

*hugs back*

[ljmckay.livejournal.com]

Yikes, that's kind of scary. Hope the salt helps! Dizziness is awful.

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

It's slightly less scary when you understand what's happening and how to deal with it. And the salt did help.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Isn't it low iron that causes dizziness?

[mari4212.livejournal.com]

There are a few things that can cause dizziness. There's anemia, or low iron, there's hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, and then there's hypotension, which is low blood pressure.

In my case, believe me, we checked out everything. I started getting these dizzy spells in high school, and I even had to finish that year with home schooling, because the dizzy spells were so bad. They put me through a lot of tests, and finally determined that my blood pressure, which is normally low, hovering around 80/50, was dropping rapidly during the dizzy spells. I have what's termed neuro-mediated hypotension. Every so often, my brain tells my body to shut down, and it does so. It's much better now, and tends to only come back if I do something stupid. In this case, it's a combination of standing still for longish periods of time, going through the effort to sing some rather hard pieces, and the fact that a large amount of people standing close together warms a place up, and being hot makes it more likely for me to have a dizzy spell.