Being Vertical Vs Horizontal During Spell

[Friedbrain]

I've seen many threads where people have commented about raising feet during "spells" so I'm asking for more specific details about why this helps. I think I understand, but it was so freaky to experience it so clearly today. I started out having really strong tremors/shaking around 11am today, and by 11:30 my fingers were numb and I was dizzy, afraid I was going to tip into seizures. I ate some low-carb food and felt better (feeling back in fingers is positive progress) but decided to try the feet-above-head thing I've read about here, in order to stop the shaking and dizziness.

So I went to my secret couch (it's a university building, and there's one hidden in the basement women's bathroom! ), and put my feet up a few inches and laid on my back. After about five minutes, the shaking completely subsided. On a side note, something happened that I've noticed before when doing this, is that it feels like gravity is sucking all the blood in my head to the back of my head. Even the sides of my eyes feel like they're being tugged back. I did a brief cranial nerve check, and found that my horizontal gaze felt a little sluggish and my tongue was jerky when I tried wagging it to the left, but not right. I've had cranial nerve problems in the past, which is why I'd even think about it. Anyone ever feel this? (I wonder if it also has to do with blood pressure-intracranial bp, to be specific).

Anyway, whenever I tried sitting back up, I would start feeling a little shaky again, and whenever I stood up, the shakiness and dizziness would be right back.

Soooooo? I didn't know my bp cuz I was at work. I usually have low bp, and occasionally have periods of postural hypotension, but I wasn't today. It was definitely something else going on.

Thanks for thoughts!

[lieze]

I'm glad you got through that okay.

I often notice if I'm going to have an issue-it's about that same time 10-11?

[ramakentesh]

Sounds like classic POTS to me. In POTS BP is not necessarily helpful - it may be higher, normal or slightly low during an episode but yet cerebral blood perfusion can dip down to as low as 44%

[Chaos]

Rama- Cerbral hypoperfusion dropping so low due to the paradoxical vasoconstriction in the area?

FriedBrain- Could the vertical vs horizontal differences be due to increased norepinephrine when you're upright? Have you been tested for hyper POTS?

I've had the same experience many times. Have had these episodes last more than 12 hours at a shot. They've always occurred after a time of significant narrowing of pulse pressure and a large drop in BP.

[ramakentesh]

Still unclear. There is the sympoexcitation leads to cerebral vasoconstriction crowd, the cerebral autoregulation is out crowd and there is the blood pooling in other areas (stomach more often than not) crowd. And there is also the not enough blood crowd as well.

If you have high BP yet feel dizzy its more likely that your having an excessive response to normal blood pooling and excessive vasoconstriction.

[Sarah4444]

I don't know the cause, but I have been having this feeling for a very long time. When I worked in the late 90s I also had a secret couch in the building where I would go to lie down - at the time I thought I was just relieving pain, but now I realize I was trying to get blood back into my brain. It has only gotten worse for me since then, but then I have only found out about POTS in the past year.