POTS (dysautonomia)

A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with a condition that I had never heard of - POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, a form of dysautonomia). Since a lot of the functional issues she deals with are similar to mine, I looked it up and was surprised to see that my constellation of seemingly unrelated symptoms does look a lot like POTS. I mentioned it to my doctor at my last physical, and she did think it was possible that I have a mild-moderate form of POTS (although since it was just a physical we obviously didn't do the testing right then). She suggested that before I bother with all the tests, I start investigating how a high-salt diet, lots of water, and regular exercise affect my symptoms. She said if it's mild enough, that change alone could correct or at least lessen my symptoms without me having to go down a rabbit hole of tests and specialists. My blood pressure is really low, so my doctors have always told me to eat as much salt as I want anyway - basically, she figured it can't hurt to try a little more.

I haven't made those changes in earnest yet because I wanted to take more time to research the condition first, so I can't say if they have/would make any difference.

But! I finally bought Dr. Schubiner's books a couple weeks ago and I was surprised to see POTS in his list of common mind-body issues. I realized that when I learned about POTS, my brain went straight out of TMS-ville and thought, "Finally! A medical answer for all of my symptoms!" Of course since then, I've learned that POTS is really difficult to manage/medicate, difficult to explain, is worsened by stress, happens to people who seem otherwise healthy, etc... classic TMS-pointing language. (At least now I know that some part of me is still hoping for an "easy" answer to all of this stuff, eager as it was to accept a half-hearted medical diagnosis and treatment plan.)

I'm totally ready to think about POTS as TMS (if POTS is indeed what I'm struggling with). It's hard to get my head around it because the symptoms are so diverse and sneaky and *feel* so medical, but I want to try. I'd love to hear if anybody else has managed to get their head around the crazy constellation of symptoms in POTS and worked with it from a TMS perspective. I'd also love to hear advice from anyone dealing with several different manifestations of TMS at once, especially those that one feels in one's organs. I think those feel so much more alarming than basic musculoskeletal pain, and it can be hard to stay in a TMS mindset with these.

Thanks for your help! I'm excited to work through Dr. Schubiner's books, too! I'm so glad I finally bought them.

 

Yes, POTS is a form of dysautonomia, which absolutely can be caused or worsened by stress and powerful emotions. I have Ehlers-Danlos, and we are notorious for dysautonomia and POTS. We truly do it better than anyone else! There are all kinds of theories as to why this happens to Ehlers-Danlos patients, such as stretchy blood vessels leading to blood pooling...

... and yet I still managed to significantly decrease my dysautonomia symptoms through mind-body/TMS work. They rarely bother me these days. Whenever the autonomic nervous system is overloaded from stress and powerful emotions, your sympathetic nervous system becomes dominant, causing all types of symptoms. This includes POTS.

I've heard of other people overcoming dysautonomia and POTS through mind-body/TMS work as well. One girl was confined to her bed and a wheelchair from POTS, but she's walking and living normally again. Dr. Schubiner is the man - listen to him. What are you stressed out? What is bothering you in life? How can you incorporate more self-care into your daily regimen?

 

How are you now bro? I have severe cfs/ME and now EDS diagnoses plus all the usual stuff like pots, ectopic beats etc. Im just starting TMS - hoping to get out of hell

 

I'm doing great! I have a success story posted here: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/threads/how-i-healed-from-a-myriad-of-symptoms.18723/ (How I healed from a myriad of symptoms)

Nerve symptoms can 100% be related to TMS - whether fully caused by TMS or significantly increased by TMS.

 

Wow that is some recovery story. Thank you for sharing. I am in the hell of it at the moment. Did you work with a coach?

 

I know the case of a woman who struggled with POTS, her heart rate shot above 140 all the time. She firmly believed it was systemic and incurable until I convinced her to give meditation a try. 6 months of daily meditation - and her POTS went away, except for the times when she had very stressful experiences leading to the panic attacks. But she meditated her way through those and her heart rate normalized.

 

This is truly incredible. Thank you for sharing this.

 

Autistic people are very vulnerable to Dysautonomia as well, if you have time look into Manuel Casanova

 

Hi bro how will you respond urge to pee?

 

You need to go to the Structured Educational Program on the main tmswiki.org site, and start doing the program.

You won't get anywhere by constantly asking multiple different people to tell you how you can stop feeling the urge to pee. There is no magic simple answer. The answer for everyone who has had success and recovered is that they did the emotional work. You, also, must "do the work".

The Program is free and doesn't even require any kind of registration. Make a commitment to yourself and just start doing it.