lthomas521

A friend of mine with bad migraines suggested that I take magnesium glycinate (also sold as chelated magnesium). It's a form of magnesium supplementation that is much better absorbed. (If you are on Florinef, you probably need a magnesium supplement, by the way.) Her doctor had recommended it. I tried it and it really seemed to help. I also gave some to a friend of mine who has type 2 diabetes and was waking up at night with horrible charley horses. No more charley horses until after he ran out of the magnesium. Another possibility is mirtazapine (Remeron). It's a prescription antidepressant, and you can take it either full-time as a migraine preventive or just when you think a migraine is coming on. There haven't been proper studies on this, nor will there be, because it is off-patent now. http://psy.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/41/2/153

I went to the doctor last week for a checkup. I explained that my main complaint is overwhelming fatigue. All I do is work and sleep. She said to work less. I said that I would take that advice if I were Canadian, but I really didn't feel like giving up my health insurance. So how do I cope with working? Not well.

Here's a link to information about the vegan diet and cholesterol in people with type 2 diabetes. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/cgi/conte...tract/29/8/1777 Here's an article about vegan firefighters in Texas http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/national...nyt&emc=rss

If all else fails, try licorice. You can get licorice teabags and licorice extract from the health food store.

Angina pectoris is the result of poor circulation to the heart muscle, usually as a result of clogged coronary arteries or constriction of the coronary arteries, or both. Nitroglycerin is a vasodilator, which means that it dilates the arteries. In someone with angina pectoris, this would improve the blood flow through the coronary arteries, thus relieving the pain of angina pectoris. In POTS, the chest pain can result from the heart "beating on empty chambers." In other words, your blood isn't getting back to the heart fast enough for your heart to refill properly between beats. This can result from low blood volume (hypovolemia) or from vasodilation (too much slack in the blood vessels), both of which also tend to make your heart rate go up. Of course, nitroglycerin would make both the pain and the tachycardia worse. If you bring your blood volume back up to normal, your chest pain might go away. Another thing you might try is midodrine, which is a vasoconstrictor. Here's a link to an article for your doctor: http://hyper.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/45/3/354.pdf

You might benefit from being evaluated by an exercise physiologist.

I used to live on a sailboat, and I used to like swimming. But around the time I really started having trouble with POTS, I really started to hate swimming. I was cold all the time, even when everyone else was comfortable.

Do they need more subjects? I'll gladly volunteer.

A pulse pressure of only 10 mm Hg (bp of 90/80) means that you are getting no blood to your brain when you are standing. It's not surprising that you feel like blacking out. It's astonishing that you don't black out. The fact that your diastolic pressure (the low number) went from 60 to 80 when you stood up suggests that you are still hypovolemic, or at least not getting venous return to the heart when you stand up. Have you had a blood volume determination? Do you use pressure stockings? If so, what are your pressure numbers like when you have them on?

Here's a link to an article on "pernicious anemia," the old-fashioned term for the problems that result when you can't absorb B12 from your food. In short, some people's immune system attacks their stomach in such a way that it no longer secretes "intrinsic factor," which is a chemical that your body needs in order to absorb vitamin B12 from food. There are also some other disorders that interfere with the body's ability to use B12. http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic1799.htm Some authorities think that people with fibromyalgia might benefit from B12 injections, even if they don't have a B12 deficiency, because B12 helps "scavenge" peroxynitrite, a substance that might keep the inflammatory process going.

Hi Morgan: Have they done a 24-hour urine catch and tested your aldosterone metabolites (tetrahydroaldosterone) by mass spectrometry? I think Quest Diagnostics offers that test. That will give you an indication of how much aldosterone you secrete in a 24-hour period. Aldosterone has a fairly short half-life.

My doctors (who is also a nephrologist) said that in my case, the pain comes from the heart "beating on empty chambers." In other words, the heart doesn't get a chance to refill properly between beats, because the blood isn't getting back to the heart fast enough. (I'd already had an echo, etc.) If so, then the answer is to expand your blood volume more and wear waist-high compression stockings. Maybe a beta blocker to slow your heart rate will help with this.

Gout looks a bit different in women than it does in men. In men, the usual presentation is a bright red and very painful inflammation of the outermost joint of the big toe. This joint is affected worst because it is coolest in temperature, so the uric acid crystals tend to precipitate out there the most. Well, guess what, lots of women have colder hands and feet than men normally do, so the uric acid crystals have a broader distribution. So the gout looks different in women. Gout is easy to diagnose, once the doctor thinks of it, and easy to manage. http://www.arthritis.org/resources/arthrit..._Women_Gout.asp

If you have a family history of colon cancer, you should start screening earlier. I think the rule of thumb is 10 years younger than the age at which your youngest afflited relative got their diagnosis of colon cancer.

Working 56 hours a week? That's suicidal. No wonder you're having a flare!

http://www.labcorp.com/datasets/labcorp/ht...no/sr003300.htm The instructions above say that the patient should be off meds for 3 weeks before the PRA test, but I think that might just be for antihypertensive drugs, such as diuretics. They also suggest a 24-hour urine specimen the day before the test, because salt intake matters.

The purpose of the multiphasic pills (biphasic and triphasic) was to try to reduce side effects. Whether they accomplished that goal is unclear. http://www.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab003283.html It sounds plausible that one would use a monophasic pill for suppression, but there's probably not much data on it, one way or the other. Stick with what works for you. I'm over 40. But I don't smoke and have good blood lipid levels. Plus I have low blood pressure and my compression stockings probably give me some protection against deep vein thrombosis. So I'm at low risk for cardiovascular disease.

My grandfather was plagued by low blood pressure for his entire life--95 years. He stayed alert until the last month or so.

Dysautonomia is a broad category, and it includes all sorts of different disorders. In patients with hepatitis C, it evidently might be a rare side effect of interferon treatment. I attached a link to a case report. http://jnnp.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/70/3/408

I use NuvaRing for that purpose. Lowest hormone dose available and very steady blood levels. Plus, you can't throw it up!

Does your doctor know about POTS? Make sure that they have extra fluids at the ready. Ask your pharmacist about options for bowel prep.

The problems that people are describing here could probably be documented by some neuropsychological tests. Tests of word finding and verbal fluency, in particular. The tests are designed to detect neurological abnormalities.

I'm lucky. I get solidly abnormal pulse readings on the TTT, without syncope. Okay, maybe I get a little vague.

In my opinion, the most dangerous thing about POTS is that it deprives your brain of blood. The second most dangerous thing is that you might faint and fall down and hurt yourself, perhaps seriously. So Florinef could help prevent these major problems. It might cause relatively minor problems of its own. If you take Florinef, then you should eat lots of fruits and vegetables, to ensure that you get enough potassium. V-8 juice, orange juice, a banana, or even a baked potato can provide plenty of potassium. You should also probably get a magnesium supplement, but you have to make sure that the magnesium won't interact with any of your other medications. (Ask the pharmacist as well as your doctor). Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about the potassium, unless you are like my neighbor, who has a rare hereditary problem that causes her to lose potassium through her kidneys. But that's rare. The second concern about Florinef is that your body gets used to it. So if you want to stop taking it, you have to taper the dosage off slowly, to let your adrenal glands adjust. Again, you have to ask the doctor (and preferably also the pharmacist) about this. The third concern is long-term effects. The main thing I was worried about was bone density, but that is easy to monitor. There is a theoretical possibility that you could have some side effects similar to those of cortisone or prednisone. These include problems with blood sugar and peculiar weight gain (moon face, buffalo hump). If the doctor refuses to give you Florinef, you might consider licorice. I get licorice teabags from the health food store, and licorice extract. Just make sure that it does have glycyrrhizin in it. The deglycyrhizinated licorice (DGL) won't do any good for POTS. Another possibility is midodrine.

What tragic stories! I think that a lot of people are freaked out about giving a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease to girls who are really too young to be having sex. But that's exactly the point. It's best to give the vaccine to the girls when they are really too young to be having sex. It's more effective that way. I don't recall anyone giving me a full-disclosure type of discussion about diphtheria before I got a diphtheria booster when I was a kid, so I don't think that it's realistic to expect that too many people will really need to go into a detailed discussion about sexuality when the girl gets her HPV shots.