Understanding POTS

POTS stands for Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, and if you've never heard of it, you're not alone. It's a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, which is the part of your body that regulates things you never have to think about, like your heart rate and blood pressure. For people with POTS, something as simple as standing up causes the heart rate to spike abnormally, and that triggers a whole chain reaction. Dizziness, extreme fatigue, brain fog, and feeling like your body is working against you every single day.

Getting diagnosed requires a tilt table test where your heart rate and blood pressure are monitored as you move from lying down to standing upright. It sounds straightforward but for most of us the road to that test was anything but.

What makes POTS especially tricky is that it often develops after a major event, a pregnancy, surgery, trauma, or a viral illness. An estimated one to three million people in the US are living with it, and yet so many go years without answers, feeling dismissed, confused, and honestly just exhausted from trying to explain something that most people have never even heard of.