low blood pressure? no, just slow!

My blood pressure has always been reasonably low. My lifestyle has always involved a lot of sitting still: reading for hours on end and, more recently, sitting at a PC for hours on end.

Sometimes -- after sitting for hours -- I will stand up suddenly and feel dizzy. It takes a while for the blood to get moving again. A few moments for the heart to get pumping harder and I'm fine again.

Low blood pressure, extra low when I'm just sitting, takes a moment to build up pressure when I move again. It's happened for at least half my life. I'm happy with the explanation.

Over the last week it's been happening again... At least, that's what I'm thinking. Sheesh! what an idiot! Or, to be polite to myself: It's taken me too long to realise that I am being affected by that other common cause of dizziness: OTTWoW !

OTTWoW is a more recent development. When did I start playing World of Warcraft? OTTWoW followed a couple of years later...

Over The Top playing of World of Warcraft!

It's not low blood pressure causing dizziness when I stand up. It's in-the-ear balance mechanisms causing dizziness when I change position. It's taken me days -- this time -- to notice the difference! Feeling so slooowww :-(

Okay, this has very little to do with cancer... Too bad :-) I'll excuse it by claiming: Some symptoms are indicators of a major disease, other symptoms are lifestyle problems, it's useful to know the difference.

If OTTWoW were caused by cancer I could just roll my eyes, shrug my shoulders and say, I'm doooomed... nothing I can do about it... But it's not part of cancer. OTTWoW is a lifestyle problem.

Here's my explanation:

I sit at the PC playing WoW, World of Warcraft.While I'm playing, I'm staring at the screen, mostly at a small area in the centre of the screen -- where all the action takes place. My head, my eyes, barely move. I may do this for hours... it's OTT -- over the top -- playing of a computer game.

My head is not moving. My eyes barely move. The balance system inside my inner ear is fixed in position...

Inside my inner ear is a fluid bath full of tiny floating crystals and sensitive hairs. When my head moves, crystals and hairs knock into each other. The hairs get knocked, send a signal to the brain, to adjust the balance of the body. This happens all the time. Crystals & hairs interact to tell my brain when I am unbalanced, the brain adjusts the body to stop me from falling over.

Except... after a few hours of sitting very still... the crystals just settle to the bottom of the fluid bath in my inner ear. There is not enough head movement to keep them floating. So they sink.

So what happens when I next move my head?

The crystals are sitting on the bottom of the inner ear bath. My head moves but the crystals are stuck in place. The hairs are not being knocked by crystals... there is no signal sent to the brain to say, Get back in balance. No signal, no balance adjustment, I just get dizzy.

The obvious identifier of OTTWoW is that I get dizzy standing up -- *or* lying down. It's not lack of blood to the brain due to low blood pressure. It's a failure of my inner ear balance mechanisms as I change position.

A full attack of OTTWoW is more than dizzy: I can't walk straight, I need to hold onto walls, I fall over.

There are at least two ways to deal with OTTWoW. Unfortunately the one that actually works, is to stop the OTT playing of WoW :-(

Must I also stop staring at the PC screen for -- for instance -- blogging?! Must I blog less, to preserve my balance?! I don't think so...

WoW requires a fixed focus on a very small area at the centre of the screen. Blogging involves staring at the screen to see what I'm typing... and watching the keyboard because I'm not a touch-typist... and staring into space while I think... Lots of head -- and inner ear --movement. No time for those inner crystals to settle. I hope :-)

So I've spent a few days thinking, this lack of exercise is bad for me. True enough... but not the full story.

The dizziness is due to OTTWoW... All the exercise I could do would not fix it -- as long as I'm still spending too much time playing the game. Yes, I do need to exercise! I also need to spend less time playing WoW :-(

I need to understand the cause before I can apply the fix.

It's not: cancer, surgery, can't exercise, can't help it... Rather it's: playing WoW, far too much, need time on other things, I need to play less WoW...

Less game time, more ... something else. Drat !

Luckily there's lots of that "something else" still to be done :-)

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Dr Nick Lethbridge / Consulting Dexitroboper
Agamedes Consulting / Problems ? Solved
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​"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." ... Albert Einstein

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Now much more than a clever name for a holiday journal:

 https://notdotdeaddotyet.blogspot.com.au/  :-)