Study Shows Structural Brain Abnormailities In Pots

[helenhz]

Sorry if this has already been posted. I found it very exciting news.

http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/53760/1/Structural_brain_abnormalities.pdf

[Praxxtor]

Very interesting Helenhz! Thank you for pointing this out! Will look into it later this evening!

[Katybug]

Interesting. Thanks for the post.

[gjensen]

I enjoyed reading this. Thank you for sharing.

You know you have dysautonomia when you can read this stuff, be interested, and understand it. Even through the brain fog.

There was a couple points that I was not convinced by, but all of it was interesting.

[Goschi]

Hm. I guess, I understood it too - so I know I do have dysautonomia, good statement, gjensen! ;-)

But I am the only one who thinks that this is in fact a very, very problematic article/study...?

1) They pretend to have found "structural brain

abnormalities" in POTS patients, which are

responsible for the autonomic dysregulation,

we experience. (to summarize it a bit

symplified).

If this turns out to be true, it would be quite

a "revolution", as it transforms or condition

from a predominantely functional one into a

basically organic brain illness. Wow.

2) These "brain abnormalities" also predispose us

to get anxiety and depression. This is even

more revolutionary. In contrast to all recent

findings, our mental/psychological symptoms

are not a mere reaction to what we experience

physically, but instead again "built in" in our

structurally abnormal brains??

As a consequence, POTS as a whole will have to be redefined as an "organic brain illness"? The physical processes are a result of abnormally structured brains. And our "anxiety" is again just a result of "brain structures"? So it is finally proved that actually everything is literally in our heads??

By miracle the physical process as well as the mental symptoms are just caused by our abnormal brains...?

So - just forget about Ehlers-Danlos, MCAD, Small fiber peripheral neuropathy, Sjogren's, other autoimmune causes, etc. etc.??? The whole thing is simply caused by abnormally structured brains?

If this would be true, the study (11 Pots-patients in it!) would smash every theory about the wide range of possible underlying causes studied during the last two decades.

I can't remember having read such an overall nonsense about POTS since I started reading thru medical literature on dysautonomia.

When I read this paper now, I permanently wondered whether I should laugh or cry. For psychohygienc reasons I chose the first option!

[bellgirl]

This is such a small study, but interesting; I'm not the least bit excited though, because that means we have an organic brain disease, which I'm assuming can't be reversed?? Yes, POTS is real; we know that already, but now we have neurotic personality traits, too, and if it is degenerative, that's upsetting to me, also. From what I have read, there are Lewy bodies in the spines of post mortem POTS patients. Now they are talking about being able to determine a Lewy body disease in Multiple Systems Atrophy, as compared to Pure Autonomic Failure in live patients in their MRI's of the brain or PET scans? They said nothing of the corpus challosum. I'd be curious to know, since mine is small, but I don't have any mental deficit. I'd be interested to know if they do any further studies. Thanks for sharing...