Last year a young woman booked in for a Skype appointment. That's nothing unusual, except that on checking her address I found out she lived but 10 minutes away from my office by bus. I jumped to a whole bunch of conclusions. May be she was shy, perhaps agoraphobic? Dare I say it, even lazy. I was wrong on every count.
The girl in question, I soon discovered, as she flickered into view on my laptop screen, was suffering from POTS or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, and her legs were covered in bruises from all the times she'd passed out and fallen in the last few weeks. The full list of her symptoms was dizzying, literally.
Topping the bill were light-headedness and multiple daily fainting episodes (especially in the shower or on standing up) with madly elevated heart rate, palpitations, chest pain, shortness of breath, shaking and sweating, weakness and exhaustion. All that plus the sideline symptoms of brain fag, random adrenaline surges, pounding headaches, nausea, heartburn, bloating, constipation, sweating, buzzing in the ears, trouble focusing the eyes, itching skin, recurring nightmares or insomnia. No wonder she didn't want to get on the bus.
The trigger in POTS appears to be a disruption to the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), in other words, the backroom of our nervous system that controls blood pressure, blood supply to the brain, the digestive system and many other 'automatic' functions of the body like sleep and body temperature control. Imagine a car where the electrics are seriously on the blink and you'll get the idea.
I'll admit I'd never heard of POTS. I'll be surprised if you have either. But POTS is on the rise and it's not about to go away any time soon. In the USA alone there are now over 3 million estimated sufferers, knocking the number of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) sufferers into a hat. Currently there's no known medical cure, only drugs to take the edge off the worst symptoms.
And just like CFS and Fibromyalgia, up until recently POTS patients have been repeatedly dismissed and dumped in the 'It's all in the head' file for too long. Mandy, the girl who came to see me, had taken over a year to be diagnosed and subjected to more than a few pointed interviews where her mental health was subtly called into question.
To give doctors their due, POTS isn't easy to diagnose, it looks like a lot of other illnesses. It can come on after a major accident, surgery, post virus like glandular fever, CFS and even pregnancy. It's also often found co-existing with a host of other maladies including diabetes, autoimmune disorders, Lyme disease, hypermobility (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) or severe allergies (Mast Cell Activation Disorder). Typically though, most doctors have been trained in the deductive school of medical reasoning where, if the patient's symptoms don't fit the medical theory, then it's the patient rather than the doctor who is wrong. And no one's got a medical explanation for POTS yet, well, not one that sticks.
Reading the available clinical papers on POTS which are now being spewed out on an almost daily basis as doctors (and drug companies) race to find a cure, the big guns are currently looking into the culprit being a compromised Vagus nerve, the majordomo of the Peripheral Nervous System. The question on everyone's lips is, but why there, why now?
A homeopath will tell you it's not that surprising. It fits perfectly with the concept of repeatedly suppressing acute illness at the cost of long term health. As master homeopath George Vithoulkas plausibly purports in the Science of Homeopathy, the body has a defense mechanism that closely guards its major players namely kidneys, lungs, liver, endocrine system, heart, and ultimately brain. From its first moment, the body will push any 'dis-ease' out, if it can, to where it causes least damage to the whole; the skin and mucus membranes, and if they're already compromised, then the muscles and bones. Those who are born into this world already sick, or have a poor genetic inheritance, are already struggling with this process.
He goes on to say that if you subvert this process again and again (think multiple vaccinations at birth, followed by a steroid cream for eczema, some antibiotics for an ear infection, the Pill for period pains or acne, and on and on), the body has no choice but to sound the retreat, and move its defense lines further and further back.
This is not a condemnation of allopathic medicines per se; Vithoulkas would be the first to admit they can and do save lives. He merely states that in his 50+ years of practice treating literally thousands of cases, he has observed that if drugs are routinely used for non emergency situations there will eventually be pay back. However far out you think Vithoulkas' theories may be, if he's right, then what we're seeing with POTS is a major retreat right to the ANS. That's pretty far in.
Theories aside, I'll admit that I was pretty reluctant to treat Mandy when she came my way. I seriously doubted if homeopathy would even touch the sides. But she was insistent; like many others she'd tried the standard protocols of the betablockers, the antihypotensives, the antidepressants et al, and none of them had helped. I won't bore you with the details of how I managed the case except to say that Mr Vithoulkas' ideas came in very handy. Four months on, Mandy is now happily catching the bus about town and even walking to work... and no more bruises. You can read about her progress here.
I am currently running a Study of POTS and its response to homeopathy. If you know someone who has POTS, or live with it yourself and would like to receive three months of free homeopathic treatment as part of the study, or a planned future study for 2019, then please contact me here.
You can read my other articles on how homeopathic philosophy meets real life - how homeopathy was discovered here and the importance of having a fever here.
Photo by Skyla King at Unsplash
@sallylloyd @alanfreestone @canadian-coconut
Excellent post again.
I have a friend who's daughter had attacks of massively rapid heart beat caused, they thought, by overgrowth of some trigger points in her heart. She's been through ablation [burning off the extra trigger points] after which she suffered pots like symptoms where her blood pressure dropped radically. Now her trigger points have regrown and the fainting has stopped, but the periodic heart racing has reasserted itself. To my mind it seems that her racing heart is an adaptation to sudden moments of low blood pressure. Maybe the extra trigger points were a red herring? Maybe they have grown there as an adaptation?
Either way, POTS has never been mentioned as a diagnosis. Never been considered.
I was thinking Paula, you may be interested to add this example to your knowledge. Sorry to have not spoken more specifically [in medical terms] but I've only had very cursory conversations with her. Her mum is not inclined to use homeopathy. Before she was diagnosed with the extra trigger points in the heart [and went through surgery] I had managed on one occasion to treat her with aconite 10M [because it happened in my house], which did revive her very well.
I'll talk to you more on this at some point and will try to find out what the diagnosis actually was, as it may be that this will be a factor in some of the PoTs cases you see.
Thanks @sallylloyd, I'll be interested to here more. I have seen Ablation in several cases of POTS, it is often mentioned by members of my support group for people with POTS, https://www.facebook.com/groups/NaturalTreatmentforPOTS/. While it works for some, for others it seems to cause more problems than it solves.
Have you still got spaces on your study if she was willing to come on?
Hi @Sallylloyd. Places are filling up fast but it would certainly be worth her applying as places may come free further down the line. thanks
Very interesting - I've worked with a couple of people with POTS last year, using META-Health analysis and EFT/Matrix Reimprinting.
A key aspect for both of them was a theme from the past of being unable to stand up for themselves.
That's interesting @eftnow. I cannot say that this is universally true of the patients I see, although of course, I have a few that fits that profile.
I have never heard of POTS, these symptoms are near death
Interesting article, Never heard of POTS.
what are the probable reason for such cases and is it common in the youngsters only?
Hi @vinamra. Thank you for your interest. There seems to be no one reason for POTS. If you visit any of the POTS support websites like http://www.potsuk.org/ or https://myheart.net/pots-syndrome/causes-of-pots/ they will give you multiple causes. Primary POTS seems mostly to affect young women, but secondary POTS can come on at any age.
Congratulations @helixhomeopathy! You have completed some achievement on Steemit and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Click on any badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about SteemitBoard, click here
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOP