POTS stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. In this condition, patients complain when they stand up for a prolonged period of time, they feel very uncomfortable with dizziness, palpitations and tremulousness and therefore they either have to sit or lie down or they risk collapsing. When you examine them, the heart rate can be found to be excessively fast. How do patients develop POTS? Increasingly we are seeing that they often inherit a genetic vulnerability such as Ehler’s Danlos syndrome/joint hypermobility syndrome and then at some point in their lives they get hit by some kind of infection, this vulnerability is unmasked and the patient starts noticing these symptoms. In essence, people are born with a genie in their lamp and then an infection comes along and the genie is unleashed and they then can't get the genie back in the lamp. The most common infection that I have come across as a trigger for dysautonomias is Glandular fever, However there are other infections that
Hide player controls
Hide resume playing