Hi Richard
Sorry I didn’t mention the nutrition side but I don’t have a great deal of expertise in this area my friend. All I know is nutrition is important and cannot be neglected, if you are to remain strong. I would attempt to eat ‘little and often’, as is advised if you do have POTS.
I DO know however that dehydration, diarrhea (and excessive urination) can lead to Potassium depletion, which can affect you ‘big time’. An easy way to replenish this (if you can tolerate it) is Banana. My twitches and jerks improved when I ate a banana a day, over time so did my heart problems.
Now I know what you are going to say, why didn’t that show up on the blood tests ? In fact I wondered why many of our blood tests came back ‘within normal limits’ (albeit close to one extreme or another!) So I’m going to share with you my little theory……
Many people with POTS suffer from a reduced volume of blood (hypovolemia, I think it’s called). Let’s take two individuals with the same blood test result of 3 units:-
Person A). Mr Normal, the average adult with 5 litres of blood, where a quantity of a substance within that blood has been measured as 3 units per deci-litre, to find out the total amount of that substance circulating in that person, you multiply the 3 units by 50 (being 5 litres x 10 deci-litres) which gives 150 units circulating in that person, yes ?
Person B). Mr POTS, the same sized adult with only 4 litres of circulating blood, in his case, you multiply the 3 by only 40 (being 4 litres x 10 deci-litres) which gives only 120 units circulating in that person. Do you get the picture ?
So the available substance, even though both of their readings were the same per deci-litre, is reduced by 20% in the POTS person ……….. are you with me so far ? Mr POTS’s body, still has to carry out the same number and type of processes as Mr Normal’s body does – but with 20% less resources. Now do you understand the problem ?
Regards
Barbara
(UK)