In fibromyalgia, dizziness, poor balance, and falls are common complaints. For some people, they're a minor annoyance that crops up on occasion. In others, they can be severely debilitating and lead to regular injuries.
Falling, and especially falling frequently, is a serious problem. The last thing you need when you're already in constant pain is to hurt yourself all the time. Frequent falls or balance problems can also lead to a fear of falling.
That fear can, in turn, make you afraid to remain active, even within your limits. According to a study in Clinical Rheumatology, 73 percent of people with fibromyalgia have a fear of physical activity, and nearly 75 percent have problems with balance.
Fibromyalgia and Dizziness
In fibromyalgia, dizziness most often comes on when you first stand up. It's similar to the feeling of a "head rush" from when you stand up too quickly, only it can happen any time you go from lying down or sitting to standing up. The sudden onset of dizziness can make you sway on your feet, stagger, or it may even make you fall or faint.
this symptom stems from dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which is called dysautonomia. The ANS is involved with a lot of critical functions in your body, including heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate, body temperature, metabolism, and digestion.

Dizziness resulting from dysautonomia can be called orthostatic intolerance, neurally mediated hypotension, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). Essentially, these things mean that the heart and the brain aren't communicating properly with each other.
What should happen is that when you stand up from a lying or sitting position, the ANS increases your blood pressure in order to fight gravity and keep a sufficient supply of blood in your brain. With dysautonomia, this doesn't happen as it should. Instead, the blood pressure can actually drop when you stand, and the result is dizziness or light-headedness. In POTS, the heart rate speeds up as blood pressure drops.
Balance and Gait Problems in Fibromyalgia
Adding to the possibility of falls, research suggests that people with fibromyalgia walk differently than healthy people. A 2009 study found that about 28 percent of people with this illness have an abnormal gait (manner of walking).