anyone know about syncope and valsalva?

[persephone]

Does anyone know what effect the valsalva maneuvre is meant to have on a normal person? Or maybe why it made me see stars and nearly faint? just curious to see if anyone else might know about this.

When I stand up and stretch, I take a deep breath and get dizzy. Stretching has always made my fainting worse. The day I broke my foot, I'd just gotten ut of bed and stretched. I know it sounds silly, but I always stretch when I stnad- I feel *SO* tired!

Anyone know why we stretch? Or how to stop? Or if it can make us dysautonomiacs faint?

[steph37822]

oops

[persephone]

Thanks SO much, Steph! It's good to find someone with some idea of this at last! You've made my day

[Ernie]

Hi,

I don't know how a normal person is suppose to react but every time I did a Valsalva I fainted. I think my BP went to 25/25.

Ernie

[Roselover]

Persphone! I was just thinking about you yesterday and wondering how your trip to London was? Was the valslava one of the things they did? How did it go and what did you find out?

Sorry, don't have much info to share about valsalva that hasn't already been said, but glad to see you back.

~Roselover

[persephone]

Hi Rose! Thanks for the note- good to hear from you!

I had lots of tests and so far, I don't have that many answers...I just know that I definitely do have POTS (which I already knew anyway!)

My Dr will get back to me once the data's been analysed.

They reckon those weird episodes I reported on here a couple of weeks ago were familial hemiplegic migraine attacks- interesting as my mum suffers terribly from migraine, alhtough not the same type. So that was interesting.

Something that was really useful though was seeing the Rheumatologist- I now know why I ache all the time- I have EDS (III) and weirder still, so does my mum! she's been unable to work for over a year due to joint pain, and her rheumatologist here at home says she's just stressed worrying about me. What a dunce! He laughed when my mum said I was going to be tested for EDS, but at the same time noted my mum's knees were hypermobile!

The nice London Professor who diagnosed us both told us that he is going to write to Mum's consultant to put him straight- it's so good that my mum has answers too! She's in torture most days!

So errr....yeah, I have POTS, and EDS....that's all I really know.

Thanks for asking though!

[sally]

Hi persephone

I am sorry to hear that you suffer from Hemiplegic Migraines. You are the only other person that I have heard about other than my oldest who suffered from these terrible type migraines for most of her younger life. Her neuro at the time told me that it is a rarer type migraine with only 10% of 10% suffering from these type migraines. Did you know that you should not take imitrex for these type migraines? We learned the hard way, of course no one tells you this stuff beforehand right?

Anyway, I wonder how many migraine sufferers have orthostatic problems in general. It must trigger it somehow I guess. This would be a great question for Karyn.

I was told alot of EDS people suffer migraines as well as per our genetics doc. Our daughters have EDS III as well. I'm not sure how long you've had them but our daughter finally stopped experiencing migraines (knock on wood) as she got older and after taking a combo of meds to help stop them. In the beginning she was getting them 2xa week and were so severe that it always meant a trip to the ER for demerol or compozine (spell?). She started at approx age 5 and dx at 8 and didn't stop until 18 years old.

She would also have visual hallucinations during these and always felt she had to urinate when she didn't really need to, docs would also think during some attacks that she was actually having a stroke due to symptoms presenting such as numbness and not able to move body parts extreme dizziness not being able to walk and we won't even go into the vomiting part....that was terrible! I don't think the ER docs ever saw what her face really looked like because she always had her head in a bucket. She would be out of it for days. I certainly wish you the best with these and hope they will subside for you as well as time goes by. Isn't having all these things grand?

Good luck and well wishes to you.