October is Dysautonomia Awareness Month and fun fact, our color is turquoise! Dysautonomia is a really big umbrella term for different types of conditions where the autonomic nervous system is not working properly. The autonomic nervous system controls essentially the “automatic” body functions such as heart rate, blood pressure, temperature control and digestion. People that have dysautonomia struggle with stabilizing these functions and can experience a wide variety of symptoms because of this. There is no cure for these conditions and even with medications to help with the side effects, it can still be debilitating. Conditions that are under this dysautonomia umbrella are: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Neurocardiogenic Syncope (NCS) and Muscle System Atrophy (MSA).
I would love to educate you all on all of these conditions but because it affects someone near and dear to my heart, I want to discuss POTS. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome can mean a whole lot of different symptoms that vary from person to person. Let’s break POTS down.
Postural, or more known as posture, is the change in your physical orientation of your body such as going from sitting to standing and how the body reacts.
Orthostatic deals with abnormal blood pressure and the body when in an upright position.
Tachycardia is just a fancy word for a fast heart rate.
Common Symptoms:
Dizziness, nausea, chest pains, migraines, fatigue, shortness of breath, lack of the ability to
focus, excessive or lack of sweating, GI issues, and last but not least passing out.
The symptoms can be unique from person to person. Some people I have known pass out if they are standing for long periods of time and their heart rate skyrockets right before hand, a small warning to sit down. Others have zero warning and pass out randomly when going from sitting to standing.
This condition is difficult to diagnose and is misdiagnosed by many doctors. One of the main ways to test for POTS is called the tilt table test which looks at the change in blood pressure and if it is a normal response or abnormal.
