First Post in a New Blog

Hello.

My name is Harper. I'm a 20 year old college student in Pittsburgh. I have Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS for short. I was initially diagnosed at the age of 15 and rediagnosed at 20. I'm keeping this blog to document my medical journey and to hopefully educate people as to what this condition is.

So what is POTS? POTS is a syndrome that basically means when I stand up, my body can't counteract the forces of gravity very well, thus forcing my heart to beat much quicker than the average person. This anomaly can be caused by any number of factors, but in most people that have it chronically it is believed to be caused by one's autonomic nervous system not working correctly, or dysautonomia. Your autonomic nervous system controls the things in your body that you don't have to worry about consciously, such as heartrate, sweating, breathing, body temperature, blood pressure, digestion, and the like. Due to this I have a whole host of seemingly unrelated symptoms including, but not limited to:

tachycardia (HR over 100 beats per minute)
low blood pressure
digestive problems
difficulty with body temperature regulation
blurring of vision
blood pooling in my legs
weakness
brain fog
feeling overstimulated

Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head that I've experienced recently. Anyhow, I plan on writing more in depth soon about medicines, treatments, and medical tests.

Harper