Bending the legs before rising from a sitting or lying position will help to avoid dizziness, Canadian cardiologists say. You can also overcome dizziness if, after getting up, cross your legs and tighten your muscles. Dizziness when getting up, up to fainting, is most often complained of by teenagers and the elderly, but it occurs in people of any age and can cause severe inconvenience. The researchers hope that the methods they have proposed will make life easier for many people with similar complaints. A slight dizziness with a sharp rise or a general change in body position occurs due to a decrease in blood pressure and, consequently, insufficient blood flow to the brain. This is considered normal, but if the symptoms last more than 2-5 minutes or lead to fainting, then we are talking about orthostatic hypotension - a symptom that can speak either just about vascular weakness or more serious diseases: diabetes, Parkinson's disease and others. Orthostatic hypotension often occurs in adolescents, when the growth of the circulatory system does not keep pace with the growth of the rest of the body, and in the elderly. Also, orthostatic hypotension can be a side effect of certain medications, occur with dehydration, anemia, blood loss.

Canadian cardiologists from the University of Calgary have suggested two tricks that will help overcome dizziness. The researchers wrote more about them in an article in the journal Heart Rhythm.

“To some extent, everyone has probably experienced such dizziness,” says Satish Raj, one of the authors of the work. But there are people who do it often. And that can get in the way.”

Dizziness occurs when blood flow temporarily increases in the lower body and decreases in the upper body. When the leg muscles are activated, the vessels in the legs expand, which only enhances the effect. The researchers hypothesized that if this vasodilatation was induced beforehand, then by the time of ascent, the pressure would equalize, and dizziness would be less pronounced.

To test this, they invited 22 women with severe dizziness when standing up. In the first experiment, they had to sit for a while and before getting up, first, in turn, raise each knee for half a minute. In the second experiment, the researchers also decided to find out how effective the previously proposed method is - after lifting, cross your legs and tighten your hips and buttocks. To compare the results, the participants also stood up as usual.

Both methods led to the fact that the pressure did not decrease as much. The participants themselves also noted that lifting or crossing their legs reduced their dizziness. Raj had previously offered these methods to his patients, and they reported their effectiveness, but now the results have been confirmed experimentally.

“Existing management options for patients with orthostatic hypotension include recommendations to stand up slowly or tighten the muscles of the lower body after standing up,” the researchers write. “This paper proposes a new, proactive option that patients with orthostatic hypotension can use every time they stand up. The information from this study can be used to develop recommendations for the treatment of patients with orthostatic hypotension who experience symptoms several times a day. A combination of muscle pre-activation and muscle tension could be another possible treatment option, but this requires further testing.”

“Training” the body probably won’t work - when the participants, after several lifts using one of the methods, got up as usual, the dizziness returned again. However, both methods are simple enough to use on every lift.

These methods are free, have no side effects, and are completely controllable," says Raj. “I think a lot of people will like them.”

The volunteers were all women because participants were selected on a first-come, first-served basis, offering participation to all patients, notes Raj. Perhaps the fact is that women suffer more often from dizziness when lifting. Researchers see no reason why the method would not work for men as well.

In addition, the sample was small, but larger studies require more funding, the authors of the work admit. They admit that they may do another similar small study, but on men.

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