POTS and Dysautonomia: Could Nervous System Dysregulation Be Why You’re Still Sick? | E185

Aaron Hartman, MD (0:00)

Pots and Dysautonomia, depending on what you look at, can be anywhere from 1% to 5% of the population. And what I think is a lot of it's overlooked because it's mild. You don't meet criteria, but you feel better when you drink lots of fluids and electrolytes. You feel better when you get your Spanx really tight, or you feel really better physically, mentally, emotionally, after you've had some time to calm your nervous system down.

Why are you still sick?

Why is your body not healing and self-repairing? You've heard from us over and over again, your body was made to heal. You were made to self-heal and self-repair. If you just give your body what's lacking, remove what's blocking or healing, you will do what you're made to do, self-heal and self-repair. But you're stuck and you're not getting better. Why are you still sick? Why do all the specialists, other doctors say nothing's wrong with you? You can't be helped. Maybe even it's all in your head. What could be one of the things that's being overlooked? The next thing I would like to talk about is dysautonomia and POTS. Now, what is POTS with dysautonomia? Basically, it's an imbalance in your nervous system, the sympathetic parasympathetic nervous system. I'm going to make this super simple because it is actually a quite complex topic and there's textbooks on the whole topic that are in the weeds. POTS revolve mainly around POTS, which is Pasteural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, which is the most common one people talk about. But the general idea is your nervous system is dysregulated and can't really get blood to your brain. So you might stand up, feel lightheaded and dizzy. You might be sitting and all of a sudden blood pulls to your feet or sleeping in the middle of the night. The symptoms can look like anxiety, panic attacks, brain fog, problem thinking, waking up in the middle of the night, ride awake, waking up in the middle of the night with your heart racing, sitting, doing just chilling, relaxing, and all of a sudden your heart spikes up. We feel pounding really hard. Sometimes it can be associated with cold hands, cold feet, wetting of your hands or wetting of your feet. Your feet actually might turn bluish. You can get a modeling of your skin almost like a spiderweb. Looking at that, if you get really cold, you can't, it's hard to regulate your temperature. You might have problems regulating your hormones, regulating your body temperature, regulating your mood, regulating your sleep. Dysautonomia touches a lot of different things and it tends to go along with mast cell, mold, Lyme, hypermobility, autoimmune issues, gut problems, a whole host of things. It's commonly overlooked because who's a specialist who focuses on this? The reality is, you look at universities, one of the local guys here at Meckle College of Virginia, that was one of the first guys who looked at this, who's retired maybe five years ago. He was a nephrologist. He was replaced by physical men rehab doctor that had a pulmonologist and neurologist helping. It's interesting how ultimately the people who get into this, there's not a specialty for it per se. It's usually a physician sees the need and leans into it. Pots and dystonemia, depending on what you look at, can be anywhere from 1% to 5% of the population. Super common. We see it all the time. What I think is a lot of it's overlooked because it's mild.

Maybe when you sit to stand, your blood pressure only drops 15 points. Your blood pressure only goes up 25 points. You don't meet criteria, but you feel better when you drink lots of fluids and electrolytes. You feel better when you get your spanks really tight, or you feel really better physically, mentally, and emotionally after you've had some time to calm your nervous system down. So if any of this is true for you, POTS or Dysautonomia might be one of the things you're dealing with. I mean, you might want to lean into that because if you have a dysregulation in your nervous system and you don't help it regulate, it's going to be hard for your immune system, your sleep-wake cycles, your hormones, your gut, all those to regulate because ultimately your brain regulates everything else, right?

Every fall, the schedule tightens and most of our attention goes to getting the kids ready.

Almost none of it goes to the person holding the whole thing together. So I put together these three things just for that. A daily multivitamin and the active forms your body can actually use, quercetin and nettles to support your immune and respiratory health without the drowsiness, and NAC and acetylcysteine to help your body rebuild its own antioxidant reserve. This is what I take every fall. That's aaronhartmanmd.com/back to school.