The disease I am doing my paper on Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, otherwise known as P. O. T. S. This disease causes the person who has it to have an increased heart rate whenever they are standing up. Also they get light headed and have horrible headaches. I chose this disease because I just found out that I have it this year and I do not know much about it so I wanted to do this paper on it so I could learn new things about it. POTS was Named and identified by Schondorf and Low in 1993.
But the symptoms for this disease have been recorded as early as 1940. At first it was just thought to be migraines and they didn’t look into it much after that because there was no reason to if it was just migraines. This disease is most likely to be found in a woman instead of a man. There is a 5 to 1 ratio that I find incredible. No one really knows why it is this way it just is. The cause of POTS is unknown at this point but they are trying to look into it more to find out what causes this disease.
They do know that it is mostly found in teenagers and in most cases it goes away when they are in their 20s. Some people may develop POTS after a viral infection or during or after a pregnancy, my doctor also told me that he has had a lot of his patients that have POTS have had a concussion in the past year. The symptoms are lightheadedness, exercise tolerance, extreme fatigue, fainting, extreme thirst, headaches, chest pain, and fast heart rate. These symptoms usually occur when the person is standing.
During a physical activity that causes the heart to race it makes the symptoms even worse and that is when the person is most likely to pass out from this disease. These symptoms like headaches for example can also happen when you are just sitting down to and they can get very bad. The cause of this is blood pooling in the legs to were when you stand up blood dose not flow evenly and not enough gets to your upper body this is why when you are standing for 10 or 15 minutes you start to get light headed.
There are some treatments such as medication. They will give the person who has POTS medication to try to stop the headaches and also medication to help the person retain water so the blood can flow evenly threw the body. But other than that there is not much they can do because they do not know the cause of the blood pooling in the legs, so they don’t know how to help it other than medication but some doctors say that diets and change in environment can help with this disease. The body does not have a defense to this disease.
Doctors do not know why this is and that is why it is a rare disease. There are no stages to this disease it just comes at you all at once and you really don’t know what to think of it then later in your life it will go away and you won’t know why it is just gone either. The only stage that this disease has is when all of the symptoms come into effect and it stays with you there are no other phases. It cannot be spread from person to person because it is not a virus or bacteria. Also it is not preventable because they still don’t know how people can get it.
If you are living with this disease it makes the little things in life a pain like talking a jog or just walking around with your friends. You constantly have a headache and you can’t really do anything about it because the medicine only lasts for so long until you have the headache again which I wouldn’t even consider it just a headache there is a big difference from a normal headache and what this feels like. For me it is especially hard and also for anyone who has this and plays sports going to practice for a sport becomes a challenge.
You have to work 10 times harder than anyone else just to keep from passing out. The worst part is it makes you not really want to do much because you know whatever you do you are going to be in pain. I don’t know if this is how it is for everyone with this disease but for me it comes to the point where when I’m doing something it gets so bad where my heart feels like it is going to pound out of my chest and I can’t walk in a straight line because I’m so light headed to where I just have to lay down and rest for a little.
Also you get tired very easily but who doesn’t like to sleep so that’s not so bad. On the other hand on some days you actually feel pretty good and you can do some things without having all the symptoms and then you feel amazing even though other people would be complaining of a headache. Works cited http://www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/pmc/articles/PMC2600095/ http://www. nymc. edu/fhp/centers/syncope/pots. htm http://www. dinet. org/pots_an_overview. htm.