Dominie's Survey Re: Alcohol? Carlene

[Guest guest]

Hi , I followed your example DINET.org, and I copied a small piece from the site below...re: POTS. Does this mean that if I had POTS as a kid then I had a high chance that I'd get CFS etc. And the site talks a lot about blood pooling. This is all coming out in current research about these conditions. About abnormal blood pooling in our bodies. The brain in particular, I think! Perhaps you can expand a little more. Because I've been sitting at the computer for over two hours, and now fatigue is setting in...ha! ha! It's very interesting. Thanks Carlene

http://www.nymc.edu/fhp/centers/syncope/POTS.htm

Postural Tachycardia Syndrome

POTS and CFS

POTS has been proposed as a mechanism for symptoms of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in a series of adult patients. POTS and CFS may share a common pathophysiology particularly in the young . Recently, a review of patients with delayed orthostatic hypotension (delayed POTS) demonstrated a high degree of association with chronic fatigue. Our preliminary data have shown that POTS physiology underlies orthostatic intolerance in the large majority of adolescents with the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). In those patients we demonstrated loss of heart rate variability consistent with vagal withdrawal, increased blood pressure variability consistent with enhanced modulation of sympathetic tone, and impaired baroreflex with a phase shift causing wide blood pressure swings uncompensated by compensatory HR changes. Preliminary vascular data suggest that these autonomic findings are associated with changes in arterial and venous properties of the lower limbs during orthostasis causing fluid collection in excess of ordinary "pooling" observed in control patients. Patterns of heart rate (left panels) and blood pressure (right panels) abnormalcy in POTS in adolescents

Pathophysiology of POTS

Pooling in the lower body due to gravity is believed to cause the findings. Indeed pooling changes were found in early work and may be quite striking. Maneuvers to increase effective blood volume such as acute saline loading and lower body compression with pressure suits will reverse symptoms and signs temporarily.

> Carlene:? You are so right about teenagers.? It is a prime age for a condition called POTS which is postural orthostatic tachycardic syndrome.? Some of them grow out of it.? Others don't.? That website is a great one though.> S.