Anxiety

[roxie]

HI ALL!! I've seen some posts about ppl having anxiety attacks and such. It makes me curious, is general anxiety a side effect of POTS? Or is it just commen for ppl to be anxious? I seem to go through spurts with a lot of generalized anxiety

Madeline

[lthomas521]

Yes. Anxiety can be a result of the same weird switched-off gene problem that is the likely cause of POTS.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.f...l=pubmed_docsum

To understand this, you need to know a little about the nerve synapse. The nervous system consists of separate cells that are separated from each other by gaps called synapses.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/synapse.html

Nerve cells send messages along by secreting chemicals called neurotransmitters into these synapses.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chnt1.html

The neurotransmitter can continue to act until it leaves the synapse. Some diffuse out, some are broken down by enzymes, and some are transported back into the cell that secreted them.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chnt1.html#tran

Esler and coworkers have found that in most patients with POTS, the norepinephrine transporter, which is responsible for norepinephrine reuptake, is missing. It is missing because the gene that carries the recipe for making it has been switched off. It's as if the cells have the recipe to make norepinephrine transporters, but they can't read that page of the cookbook.

If you don't have these norepinephrine transporters, you may have an anxiety problem, or you may have POTS, or you may have both. But in this case, both the POTS and the anxiety problem are the result of the gene being switched off. The anxiety didn't cause the POTS.

[flop]

thank you - that was a really helpful reply and I loved the cookbook analogy!

Flop

[roxie]

thats a great way of putting it!!! is there anyway to tell if you have the noerepinepherine transporter problem? how do you know if you have hypoadregnic pots? i've wondered that for a while now

madline