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Integrative Health

Can Stress Really Cause Vertigo? Here's What To Know, According To Experts

Author: Marissa Miller, CPT

March 18, 2026

mbg Contributing Writer

By Marissa Miller, CPT

mbg Contributing Writer

Marissa Miller is a certified personal trainer and holds a certificate in plant-based nutrition and has over 10 years of experience editing and reporting on all things health, nutrition, beauty, fitness, style and home.

What is vertigo?

Stress & vertigo

Prevention

Handling a vertigo attack

Other causes

Image by Chelsea Victoria / Stocksy

March 18, 2026

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You know the feeling: You're sitting completely still, yet somehow your mind manages to trick you into feeling as if you're spinning or moving up and down, as if you were on an amusement-park ride. Those are some of the telltale signs of vertigo, a condition that affects up to 15 to 20% of the adult population, reports the Handbook of Clinical Neurology1.

"Patients often blame themselves or feel like they're losing it when dealing with vertigo," says Joey Remenyi, MClinAud—vestibular audiologist, neuroplasticity therapist, and author of Rock Steady: Healing Vertigo or Tinnitus with Neuroplasticity. "Those dizzy sensations are truly inside of you. They are neural messages created by your brain and body and can change daily. You may need support to recalibrate those neural networks so you can feel like yourself again, but it absolutely is possible."

And because stress and vertigo are inextricably linked, according to Remenyi, managing stress properly can help. Here, expert-approved strategies to combat vertigo brought on by stress.

What is vertigo?

Vertigo is any sensation of movement or disorientation when you're still, explains Remenyi. "It can manifest as disequilibrium, dizziness, nausea, unsteadiness, or as simply feeling not quite right." The feeling of vertigo can last anywhere between a few hours and a few days.

So, how does it happen? Mohamed Elrakhawy, M.D., resident physician in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University at Buffalo, explains that there are five organs in each inner ear responsible for determining the body's orientation.

- Three semicircular canals, positioned at approximately right angles to one another, are fluid-filled gyroscopes that signal head rotations to the brain (like nodding up and down, shaking side to side, and tilting left and right). They are responsible for rotational acceleration.

- Two otolith organs (both utricle and saccule) act as small pendulums that swing to indicate linear accelerations of the head. Small crystals called otoconia lie on a gelatinous membrane, which shift to cause sensations of linear acceleration, whether vertical or horizontal.

Alyssa Kirby Horowitz, N.D., who frequently uses naturopathic remedies to treat patients' vertigo, says the brain uses a variety of strategies to determine our body's orientation. She likens the mechanism to a bubble-filled level used in home renovations.

The relationship between stress and vertigo

Remenyi says vertigo results from error messages being sent between the ears, eyes, limbs, and brain—so any lifestyle factor that leads to fatigue or overwhelm can trigger vertigo.

Here's something to think about: Like an endless loop or vicious cycle, stress influences vertigo as much as vertigo influences stress, according to Remenyi. "Vertigo symptoms can make patients feel anxious, stressed, self-critical, or stuck in rigid thinking, and all of those feelings are valid."

In addition, Horowitz says that when we're stressed, our hormone cortisol increases, which in turn affects our vestibular system, the part of the brain that controls balance and makes us feel off-kilter, as if we're on a boat while grounded.

It may seem as though the relationship between stress and vertigo is clear-cut, but Elrakhawy explains why it's a little more nuanced than experts previously thought. He says the stress response is complex, in that it involves various organs and chemical mediators that are secreted at various times depending on the body's current state.

He cites a few studies that looked into the relationship between the vestibular system and stress, specifically various stress hormones such as cortisol:

- One small study with 10 healthy volunteers investigated the stress response after vestibular stimulation2 and found that cortisol levels were elevated above resting levels during simulation.

- Another study published in the Journal of Vestibular Research found that there were elevated cortisol levels3 in dizzy patients with a diagnosed cause of vertigo, compared to those with idiopathic dizziness.

- Lastly, a study analyzing cortisol levels4 in patients with Ménière's disease (which involves fluctuating hearing loss, tinnitus,