Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) is a condition where a person’s heart rate elevates rapidly when going from seated to standing. POTS occurs because blood vessels don’t tighten rapidly enough when you stand quickly. It’s a form of autonomic dysfunction that causes blood to pool in the legs and the brain receives inadequate blood flow.
- Severe, long-lasting fatigue
- Lightheadedness when standing after prolonged sitting
- Brain fog
- Heart palpitations
- Nausea
- Headaches
- Exercise intolerance
Most people dealing with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome simply deal with the consequences. The condition is poorly understood and there is no known cure. Typically POTS couples with other conditions such as:
- Fibromyalgia
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
- Lupus, Sjogren’s syndrome, and other autoimmune conditions
- Type 2 diabetes
- Ehler’s Danlos Syndrome
- Mast cell issues
I get regular inquiries as to my thoughts on addressing circadian rhythms to correct POTS. Certainly there’s a relationship given circadian rhythms regulate autonomic responses including heart rate and blood pressure. A few people in my Circadian Retraining Program have mentioned that they thought their POTS was getting much better. Unfortunately I didn’t really have any hard data on that…Until now.
Correcting postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome with circadian optimization
If you follow my page on Facebook, you may have noticed a testimonial I re-shared last week. The blog was on a 39 year old woman who saw excellent results doing my Stop Leaky Gut Challenge. After doing the challenge, she saw improvements in her:
- Sleep
- Histamine intolerance
- Adrenal fatigue
- Decreased inflammation
- Greater exercise tolerance
She also saw some mild improvements in her POTS, but it was still there. But given all of the other improvements, how can one complain? Fortunately she was highly motivated and not done yet. Rather than take what she got, she kept plugging away and decided to try one more step. She lowered her fat intake.
Lowering fat intake and mitochondrial dysfunction
This woman isn’t the first person in my Circadian Retraining Program group to kick the tires on a low fat diet. Another woman saw already impressive results skyrocket after she cut her fat intake earlier this year. You can check out her results here.
Both had mitochondrial dysfunction, but for different reasons. As a result, both saw substantial improvements in their resting heart rate. The first woman’s results are pretty dramatic:
Her results were almost immediate after starting low fat at the beginning of January. Our more recent low fat voyager is still at the beginning, but there was a pretty immediate drop as well:
It’s important to point out that the high number is inflated due to a recent infection. Her typical resting heart rate hovered around 77. You can see where she started cutting her fat and her heart rate began dropping. As a result, her resting heart rate dropped 8 points in 8 days.
And this is average resting heart rate, not just her lowest heart rate while resting. So this is a pretty quick response. But her daily chart is shocking!
Lowering fat intake and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome
I highly recommend people in my groups measure things like sleep, activity, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability. As a result, they have quite a bit of data at their fingertips to help individualize the program. Just take a look at the stark difference in how her heart rate responds to getting up and down before and after low fat:
Both charts are under the same conditions. She’s not exercising in either one, this is simply how her heart rate would respond to standing. The top one is from July before low fat and the bottom from August during low fat.
Look how over the place the top chart is. Her max heart rate was 169 bpm while her low was 49 bpm. That’s a range of 120 bpm and her heart rate would soar 50 points on a regular basis.
Contrast that to the bottom chart in August. Her max heart rate was 112 bpm while her low was 65 bpm. Her single highest jump was 37 bpm and most were less than 20 bpm.
So even though she hasn’t yet seen a substantial drop in her average resting heart rate, her variability is much tighter. From a range of 120 bpm that’s now 47 bpm. Given that she had already seen some progress on this front, I would hate to see what it was before the program.
Conclusion
Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome can negatively impact a person’s quality of life. And given that it seems to come with some other pretty nasty problems, correcting it can dramatically improve your health and well-being.
This woman’s impressive results show what can be done with continued circadian optimization. The first stage was gut healing through the Stop Leaky Gut Challenge. This allowed her to heal her gut and led to some improvements in all of her symptoms.
It also allowed he to reintroduce foods that were problematic before. Foods such as tomatoes, oranges, wheat, and soy sauce. In fact, she says most foods are fine in moderation.
Once she could eat more foods, she could try low fat. But eating low fat is hard with limited food options due to a jacked up gut. Based on other results, I can see her increasing her fat intake once this all settles down. Provided she sticks to her circadian schedule.
Hey folks, the Stop Leaky Gut Challenge is going on sale through the holiday weekend. From now through Labor day you can get the Stop Leaky Gut Challenge Rd 2 for $77, that’s $30 off the regular price. Just click the link below for details!
Buy the Stop Leaky Gut Challenge Rd 2
That’s an amazing change. As someone who has orthostatic hypotension – so less tachycardia, more blood pressure drops – would this have a similar effect? Has this person commented on how her blood pressure has changed?
Hey Michael, she hasn’t mentioned anything in reference to her blood pressure. There may be a mild adjustment, but it would be either a mild increase or no change at all. Optimally there is a mild change in heart rate(10-20bpm increase or less) and no major BP change. This signals proper autonomic function.
People can have POTS for different reasons, and they don’t always also have orthostatic hypotension. There are a few ways to get there, but I think the biggest driver is a decrease in LPS absorption. LPS absorption can cause autonomic dysfunction, and the primary effect of the Stop Leaky Gut Challenge is to bring LPS absorption as low as possible. I’ll be publishing a blog today or tomorrow detailing this.