Hi everyone, I was diagnosed with POTS only recently and my doctor advised me to try physical therapy first and only later try out some medication. The issue is, right at the time my POTS related issues started I've also started to get extremely frequent upper respiratory tract infections - I've been forced to take antibiotics every 3 weeks from February this year because of recurring infections. Because of these infections I constantly feel tired, sick, my throat hurts, etc, so together with the POTS symptoms it is nearly impossible for me to exercise, which makes me even more depressed as I used to workout 4-5 times a week and loved it before all of this. After lots of tests, it seems that my recurring infections are caused by constantly inflamed nasal mucous membrane that constantly produces large amounts of clear mucus in which bacteria easily thrive. I don't have any allergies so the doctors really can't find any reason why my nasal mucosa constantly keeps producing mucus. Now, I've been taking pseudoephedrine for the last 7 days to lower the amount of mucus produced and it is the first thing that helps. Actually, it helps for my POTS symptoms too, I feel less tired, can see better, feel less cold, etc., I've been actually able to go to the gym for the first time since February and not feel extremely bad afterwards. The mechanism of action of pseudoephedrine is that it constricts vessels in the body, raising blood pressure a bit and when the capillaries in the nasal mucosa are constricted they can't release that much fluid so less mucus is produced. To my understanding one of the mechanisms of POTS is that the underlying autonomic dysfunction leaves the vessels in the whole body expanded so when standing up blood pools in the legs which eventually leads to fainting etc. My question is, could it be possible that my nasal mucosa is able to produce abnormal amounts of mucus constantly because of expanded capillaries there, so that there is a connection between POTS and my infection issues? Have any of you had similar issues with mucus? I see that for example midodrine is used for its vasoconstricting properties - can any of you who used it tell me if it had similar decongesting/anti-mucus effects on you as pseudoephedrine?
