jump

Actually, a RESTING heart rate of 100 or above is cause for concern. If your doctor has ruled everything out, then it is possible to just have a high resting hr from POTS. But a high resting rate can also be a sign of another illness that could be contributing to your POTS in the first place. Some common causes for high resting heart rates in young people are: - over-training (too much exercise or too great an increase in exercise) - having an enlarged heart - smoking - having heart disease - having structural problems with the heart - overdosing on caffeine - very poor diet Having a high resting heart rate can put a person at a higher risk for heart disease and heart attack. If I were you, I would follow up with this with your doctor. Have you had a 24-hour holt monitor test? Then you would know for sure if your heart rate is always in tachycardia (100 or above at rest is considered tachycardia) or if when you sleep your heart gets a break.

I am a little suspicious of this doc that said 95% of his patients were cured with exercise. I have, over the course of two years, built myself up to a VERY respectable exercise routine. Right now I am able to exercise for about 4-5 hours a week. This took extreme determination to achieve. And I STILL have POTS symptoms that dramatically interfere with my life. I feel slightly better -- maybe 10% better -- than I did a year ago, and that may be due to the increased exercise. But in my experience, exercise alone does not account for POTS. Here are the symptoms I have in common with you, in case it helps. I made bold the symptoms that bother me the most/are the most common for me: ? Malaise ? never feel good, vague feeling of something ?not feeling right? ? Lightheaded constantly. Drinking a significant amount of fluids or taking in salt has no effect ? Dizziness ? Feeling as if I can't take a satisfying, deep breath ? Feeling like I need to catch my breath, need to take a deep breath ? Heart pounds strongly after standing or minimal exercise, causing the need to stop and take deep breaths. (Echo showed ?sluggish heart? but Stress test was negative) ? On the verge of syncope on multiple occasions ? Fatigue ? Difficulty swallowing- feels as if muscles in throat just freeze ? Slurred speech, problems getting out what I want to say ? Creaking/cracking in base of head/neck (usually upon movement but sometimes while head and neck are still) ? Increasingly significant tinnitus/pulsing sensation in ears (with my heartbeat) ? Ears constantly ?go out?- Everything will sound distant ? Left ear feels ?full/stuffy?, constant need to ?pop? or ?crack? ? Shooting pressure, occasionally in conjunction with pain, up the left side of neck ? Stabbing pains in head, occurs for a few seconds then dissipates. Sometimes this will happen a few times sporadically, other times over the duration of hours or days ? Visual problems o Trailing vision o Shaky vision o Flashing vision o Extreme after images o Bright lights, clouds o Black/neon spots o Palinopsia (visual snow) o Occasional episodes of double vision o Blurry vision o what looks like millions of tiny particles-- it looks like i can see air, words moving on paper while reading and looks as if the floors is moving like waves sometimes ? Muscle twitches/spasms ? Occasional teeth chattering when I start feeling sick, then come the tremors, nausea, and the chills ? Occasional neuropathy - shoots down arms ? Feel very ?hypersensitive? to light, sounds, movements (unable to be where it is loud and has bright lights- this has squashed my whole social life) After being in a stimulating environment I will feel over sensitive to everything and "wired" ? GI Issues- I'll leave it at that smile.gif ? Bladder pressure/tingling sensation after urinating on occasions ? Feel full all the time, no appetite, cannot eat large meals anymore ? Throbbing/pulsing sensation in my head/neck/face (it feels like I can feel my pulse in my brain) ? Sensation when I'm laying down as if I am rocking on a boat or the bed is moving, feeling like my blood is rocking up and down my body I've had this problem for YEARS, and I've never heard anyone else describe it!!! Sometimes this sensation actually wakes me up, and it often prevents me from falling asleep. It's VERY weird ? Body rocking while sitting up(my body actually rocks back and forth involuntarily on occasion) ? Problems sleeping ? Exercise Intolerance, I used to exercise all the time, now sometimes I need to take deep breaths after walking up the stairs. My visual problems also get worse upon exercise; it looks like the floor is falling in everywhere I look. ? Cannot tolerate the heat/cold. (I get extreme pain in my ears and head after being out in the cold for a brief period of time.) It IS hard sometimes to figure out what is POTS and what is something else. I have hypothyroid disease, and I struggle to know which symptoms belong to which illness sometimes. However, over time I've learned to determine what "feels" like POTS fatigue vs. what feels like thyroid fatigue. I hope you are able to sort out what ails you, and get some relief. Good luck, jump

She wasn't actually tested for celiac. Celiac runs in her family, so when she started having GI problems (stomach pain, diarrhea) her doc just suggested she eat gluten-free to see if it would help. She did, and felt better immediately -- plus, a lot of her dizziness and "clutziness" has diminished since following a GF diet. But, if she's been GF for a year, and never had any vitamin deficiencies when she WAS eating gluten, why would she have a deficiency now, after she's eliminated gluten for so long?

I don't have any advice to add, I just wanted to say Welcome and offer (((hugs))) of support to you and your wife. I know a health crisis like this can be awful, but try to keep the long view in mind and keep staying optimistic. A lot of people with POTS find things that at least help, even if they don't cure everything. If you and Michelle keep trying to find a solution, chances are you will at least find something that will help her health improve. Don't lose hope and don't get discouraged. Sometimes it takes a long time to find anything that helps. take care, jump

I think they tested them all, and only the B12 came back deficient.

Hi all, I have a friend who also has POTS, and lately her symptoms have been much worse. She went to the doctor and they figured out she was severely vitamin B12 deficient, so they gave her a prescription to fix it, and said probably her worsened symptoms were due to the lack of B12. What I'm wondering is, what kinds of things can CAUSE a b12 deficiency, besides not eating well? She eats a lot of meat. She has been on a gluten-free diet for about a year. The doctor didn't seem to think that POTS itself would cause the deficiency, more that the deficiency was causing the POTS. I know several people here have had problems with B before, and I was wondering if any of you know why B gets deficient. My friend wants to try and prevent this from happening again, since she's been feeling so very crappy with it!!!! Also, if she takes the medication and her POTS symptoms go away completely, do you think it's possible that she didn't have POTS at all but just an undiagnosed B12 deficiency? That's what she's secretly hoping, since her life with POTS has been hard, but I don't want to hope along with her if there's no way it would actually be possible.... thanks for any insight you can offer, jump

Ruekat, Sorry you're having such a hard time!!! I'm not currently on a BB and I consistently have tachycardias when I stand (110-140, usually, up from 65 sitting), and I have HORRIBLE chest pain. So intense that sometimes I have trouble focusing on conversations, etc. I also get really winded when I climb stairs, and my BP shoots all over the place all day long, from too low to too high. And I had an echo and an EKG and a 24-hour test, all that said my heart was structurally sound. My doctor has reassured me that, since my heart is structurally ok and since my heart rate and bp get a rest when I sit down or sleep, that I don't have to worry about damage. She told me that the BB is really only about controlling my symptoms so I FEEL better; the BB does not actually make me better or resolve the original problem. For this reason, whether I take them or not is my choice, and there's no reason to take them unless they make me feel better. In my case, I do feel a lot better on BBs, and I'm going to start taking one again in a few weeks. But if they don't make you feel better, then you should probably pursue a different avenue of treatment. In terms of chest pain, etc, it IS possible to have intense pain and be perfectly ok (as in my case), but you do want to feel confident that your doctor has completely checked you out before you accept that everything really is ok.

Hello all, Here's what's been happening to me lately: If I have to stand up for a few minutes, my heart rate will start to race to about 120. Once it's been at 120 for a few seconds (maybe ten or fifteen) I will suddenly have two or three HUGE pounding hearbeats that are REALLY SLOW - like only one a second (60 bpm) for a few seconds. Then my heart will start up again at about 80-90 bpm, and slowly increase until it gets to around 120, then I have the huge heart-pounds again, and then it's back to the 90ish range and moving up. In a way, this is great, because I'm not stuck at 120 or higher for minutes on end while I try to do things like wait in line at the bank, and it means my AVERAGE hr during a tachycardia is around 105 instead of 120-130. But I'm really curious as to what my body might be doing. I assume this is some kind of way my body is compensating with the high hrates but I'd love to know what's happening. Have any of you ever experienced something like this before? My only concern is that at the doctor's office, this might make it look like I'm not having a tachycardia, or not as severe, if they happen to monitor my heart-rate during a "slow" section of the cycle. The whole cycle takes about two minutes so they could easily pick a slow 30-second interval to take my pulse when standing. I know I can just explain all this to them but the nurses already think I'm crazy so I'm not completely sure they'd listen to me. Although my doctor would, so I guess I shouldn't worry too much about the nurses.

Just wanted to say quickly, that I also tend to have HIGH bp upon standing with tachycardia. Not always but usually. I don't have high bp when sitting/lying down. I was wary of adding salt to my diet, because I didn't want to make my standing bp worse, but I actually found that adding salt and fluids made my standing bp and hr MORE normal. When I only added fluids it didn't work as well. I'm not sure why the salt doesn't make my bp higher, but it doesn't. So, if your doc is recommending it, you might want to give it a try and just take it slowly and monitor things. hope you find some help for your symptoms, and welcome to the board.

OMG -- where on earth did you find a POTS cardiologist?????!!!! I didn't even know such a thing existed!!

Here's how my doctor explained it to me, and I actually think for once she got it right: If a person is profoundly deconditioned from, say, being bed-ridden for several months due to a major illness, the deconditioning can cause POTS-like symptoms: rapid hr upon standing, the body has difficulty regulating its own bp. This is because the muscles of that person are so wasted that they cannot aid the blood vessels in constricting properly. This is not, however, "really" POTS, since it has a known cause and a known cure, and it is not caused by some kind of neurological problem but instead caused by a muscle problem. In this case, "deconditioned" is a condition BY ITSELF, and its symptoms are very similar to POTS. A person who develops POTS, however, may find that their symptoms are easier to manage when they are in good shape, particularly when their legs and core muscles are strong, as these help to keep blood from pooling too much in the extremities. I have found this to be true for me: when I'm able to exercise regularly, my POTS symptoms are not as severe. I used to have hr's in the 140s regularly and occasionally in the 180s without fainting; my doctor said this was probably because my heart was already very strong from my previous life as a distance runner, and that if I had been a non-athlete who developed POTS I'd probably be fainting when my hr reached that high. Being well-conditioned didn't keep me from getting POTS, but it made my symptoms more manageable. She also said that when a person with POTS hits a rough patch, their symptoms often prevent them from exercising very much, which in turn can lead to deconditioning of muscles --- which in turn can make POTS symptoms worse. But in this case, deconditioning doesn't CAUSE pots -- it only can possibly make symptoms harder to manage. But, since deconditioning and POTS have very similar symptoms, it would be really hard to tell if a person with POTS is, in fact, becoming de-conditioned (unless they had visible muscle wasting). She recommended that I always try to keep some kind of exercise routine going -- whether it's walking or even hiking slowly on good days, or just lying on my back and doing leg-lifts on bad days, or just flexing and tightening my muscles repeatedly on really bad days. I have found that pushing myself to exercise even when it's a little uncomfortable ultimately makes my symptoms lessen -- but pushing myself TOO MUCH into the uncomfortable zone will send me into a few weeks of much WORSE symptoms. So it really is a balance. There have been times when out of the blue I can't go for a walk or do much of anything without gasping for breath and feeling like I'm going to die. Then, seemingly for no reason, I'll have other times when I can go for regular half-hour walks without much of a problem. I try to keep up some exercise when I can, but only because it helps me feel better, not because I think NOT exercising causes POTS.

What about meals on wheels? They deliver in almost every part of the country -- even really rural areas -- and they are completely free. If you have a little money to offer as a donation, they'll take it, but it's by no means expected. I deliver for meals on wheels in my area as a volunteer (when I'm well enough) and there are several people on my route who are young but disabled. You do not have to prove you are disabled or financially discouraged to be allowed to get meals -- you just have to have a need for them. You also don't have to be completely housebound -- I have several clients on my route who can work part time, or get out to appointments, but can't do all that AND cook and grocery shop for themselves. And they usually accommodate some food allergies, depending on how severe and how restrictive they are. And I like someone else's suggestion of asking someone in your mom's church to maybe grocery shop for you once a week. I belong to a church, and there are lots of people who do things like that for friends or family of other church members. Or, if you don't want to get too tied up with your mom's personal space, you could just call around your local churches and ask if there would be anyone willing to help. Something like a once-a-week grocery run is easy for church people to do because it's very specific, and a lot of people go to the grocery store anyway and don't mind picking up someone else's things as well. I think others are right, it sounds like you and your mom have some "big picture" problems to work out (finances, caregiver stress) but if you can deal with the immediate issues of finding resources to help you take care of yourself in the day-to-day stuff, it might make it easier to tackle some of the bigger issues.

I agree that you probably don't have to worry about brain damage, but if you're concerned check with your doctor. Brain damage related to altitude is rare, and in normal populations you would have to LITERALLY go from sea-level to 14,000 feet -- no stop in Denver, no time to acclimate whatsoever. Since you have time in your trip to acclimate and since you are still going to be well below 14,000, even taking into consideration your ans dysregulation, it seems profoundly unlikely that that would be a problem. However -- feeling sick is definitely something to be concerned with!! I have been to Colorado (up to 13,200 ft) when I had POTS, but it was during a time that my POTS symptoms were not at their worst. I felt light-headed, out of breath, etc but nothing that was incapacitating. I let myself acclimate really slowly: I was in Denver for two days, then at an elevation of about 9,000 for a few days, then 11,000, then 13. I hydrated like a fiend and ate a lot of salt. I also started taking asprin about 5 days before I left and continued taking it while I was there. I took two a day every day until I got to Colorado and then once there I took three a day. I avoided all potential triggers like the plague (caffeine, alcohol, etc), got plenty of sleep the week leading up to the trip. I didn't feel my best while I was there, but it was still a good trip and I was able to enjoy myself. Another time I went to a different high-elevation place with some friends. I took a tramway from about 9,000 ft. to 12,600. THIS was a huge mistake, because it was too fast and I didn't have time to acclimate. Also, I hadn't planned ahead of this, so I didn't take asprin or hydrate or eat extra salt or anything in preparation. And I got really, really sick. So POTSy I couldn't stand AT ALL - it was the first time I ever completely collapsed with POTS symptoms. My hr lying down was like 150, and I turned chalk white and was sweating this cold sweat.... but, the good news was, once I took the tramway down to 9,000 ft again, I felt fine. Again, not great, but well enough to enjoy myself. People with this condition are definitely much more succeptable to altitude sickness, so if you really want to go on this vacation, I would strongly advise you to plan ahead. Talk to your doctor and find out if an asprin regimen would be ok for you -- it really helped me a lot. Also, if you do start feeling sick, make sure you eat. One of the biggest problems with altitude sickness is that people feel nauseated, so they don't eat, and this in fact makes it much much worse. So eat plenty, drink plenty, and acclimate as slowly as you can. Keep in mind, too, that if you do start feeling unwell, you can always drive back to Denver and that should make you feel ok again. Even if Denver is a lot higher than your hometown, going "down" from an altitude almost always eases the sickness, even if going down doesn't bring you back to sea level. Even if you feel up to skiing, I would strongly suggest that you don't for at least a few days -- because the chair-lift would be a very similar situation to what I experienced with the tramway. You would be going too high too quickly. If after a few days you want to try it, then I'd recommend not going to the top of the mountain. You wouldn't want to get up there and then be so sick you couldn't ski down!!!

Sometimes I'll wake up at night absolutely drenched in sweat from my chest, but my hands and feet will actually be purple they're so cold -- even with ski socks on! In the day, I will have sweaty underarms, although not necessarily what I would consider a wildly unusual amount -- it only seems unusual given my hands are ice cold at the same time. If I were a naturally warm person (like my boyfriend, for example) I wouldn't think my sweating at all unusual. But, considering my teeth are often chattering and I can't move my hands half the time, yet I'm STILL sweating under my arms, yes, that seems strange to me. I just shower frequently, and change my shirt in the middle of the day. Since I know this happens, I can plan ahead, and if I know I have a meeting coming up or something, I keep a fresh shirt handy in my car. And I ALWAYS have gloves on. I have several pairs of gloves with just the tips of the fingers cut off, and they are a godsend. I also use those disposable hand-warmers that are made for skiing. I use them in july when I'm sitting outside, but hey, whatever works, right?

I'm a definite night owl, and I always have been. I've never done a sleep study before, though. My "usual" sleep habits: I get in bed around 11 and read for an hour or so; sometimes a little earlier. I'm usually asleep around 11:30 or 12. If I can sleep until 10 am, I feel my best. If I can sleep until 9, I'm still functional. If my schedule mandates that I get up earlier than 9, I feel like death all day -- even if I go to bed earlier the night before. One or two days a week I sleep until 11 or 12, usually if the previous day was really busy. I have no trouble falling asleep, but then I usually wake up every 2 hours or so, and stay awake for about 1/2 hr - 1 hr before falling asleep again, although the past few nights I've been only waking up 3 times the whole night, which has been BLISS. The frequent waking has only happened to me since I've developed other POTS symptoms, but the "night owl" thing has been going on my whole life. I used to be much worse -- in my teens and early 20's, I COULD NOT fall asleep before 2 or 3 am, and often felt the most comfortable going to bed around 4 and getting up at 10. Needless to say I needed a lot less sleep then, which helped. I've actively tried to change my "bed time" to an earlier time, and 11:30 or so seems to be the earliest I can muster, even after months of getting in bed and turning the lights off at, say, 10. I just CAN'T fall asleep that early. But, I do get in bed and read, figuring that's at least restful. And I've managed my work schedule to allow me to sleep late most days of the week, which helps a lot. In the fall, two days a week I had a morning class, and I had to get up around 7. I only had to work two hours, but on those days I had to get up early the entire day was ruined after -- I was totally non-functional and had horrible chest pain and tachycardia. Now, I work afternoons and evenings, and I can work many more hours at a time (sometimes as many as five hours in a row) and I'm relatively ok. There's no question, for me, waking up "early" is a big trigger for POTS symptoms.

I routinely have a hr in the 50s and tachys in the 120's-140's when I'm not on medication, and my bp does crazy things, and there is nothing wrong with my heart. So... yes, it is possible to have those symptoms with no underlying heart disease. That being said, I had an echo, an ekg AND a 24-hour holt-monitor to determine there was nothing wrong with my actual heart. And that kind of jumping around tends to be my "normal." I agree with others -- if this is a new thing, instead of the "usual" abnormal symptoms, then I would definitely be persistent in getting it checked out. If I were you I would really pursue the echo and 24-hour ekg. Even though mine came back clear, it made a big difference in my life to KNOW there was nothing structurally wrong with my heart. It's awful to feel like something is really wrong and not really know for sure if it is or not. Get the tests done so you will have some peace of mind, if nothing else. It IS possible for a virus to badly affect heart function, and for that reason you need to follow up on this. It's also possible for everything to get thrown off for a few weeks following an illness, and sometimes that's just the fun of ans dysfunction (I often have much worse symptoms when I am sick and for a few weeks after being sick). But in my opinion it's not something worth risking -- HOPEFULLY it will end up being nothing, just the side-effects of a virus, but it's wise to get it checked out, just in case.

So beautifully said!! Thank you for posting this. It really helps to read it. I struggle a lot with accepting that I just can't go through life the way a lot of my peers can. I only work part-time right now, and I feel like I can barely keep up with work, a little bit of a social life, etc. There are many days when I work for three hours and then have to come home and sleep for the rest of the day. I feel guilty about this a lot -- especially since I don't really "seem" sick (I tend to be a very positive and cheerful person, and in many ways this does me a disservice because then people around me don't know how I really feel). I AM able to do so much -- and in some ways that makes it harder to accept that there are things I can't do. My thinking goes, "Well, if I could go to work yesterday, then why can't I manage this family gathering today?" Or, "well, I went to the bank this morning and stood in line for a few minutes and didn't faint or collapse or anything, so why can't I cook dinner now?" Anyway, reading things like this helps me keep in in perspective and be gentler with myself. Thanks!

There was another thread about this earlier, if you search for it you may find more information.... I have autoimmune thyroid disease and celiac (which is autoimmune), and at the moment I have pre-diabetes (diabetes is an autoimmune disorder as well) but that is most likely related to my thyroid being poorly managed, as opposed to my body attacking the insulin or whatever happens in "real" diabetes (I forget). There are four autoimmune disorders that are "linked" on the same gene: hashimoto's and grave's thyroid diseases, celiac disease/gluten intolerance, rheumatoid arthritis, and type I diabetes. There are a lot of people here who seem to have autoimmune disorders on this spectrum.

Yes, and if you have unmanaged thyroid problems, it can seriously mess with your blood sugar (as I recently found out). Even if they don't have any medicine to help with the hypoglycemia, if you can have your thyroid properly cared for, you may find it might help some with your hypoglycemia, and make it less extreme. Def. talk about both issues with an endo! hopefully you'll finally get some help for this.

I was taking 25 mg of Metoprolol ER (the generic of Toprol XL) once a day and I LOVED it. I found that it lasted a full 24 hours. I took it at night before I went to bed so that it would be fully in my system by the morning, which is always my worst time. Sometimes if I was a few hours late for a dose I would notice my tachycardias coming back, but that was only after I hadn't had the drug for more than 24 hours. On the drug, my resting (awake) hr was around 50-55, and my "tachycardias" would be around 100-110. I could sometimes stand without any tachycardias, with my hr around 70 or 75. But, even though the difference between 55 and 100 is still kind of a lot, I still felt a LOT better than when I was without meds, and my hr would go from around 60-65 to 120-140. Also, on the beta blocker I no longer had high or low bp upon standing -- my bp tended to stay the same (within the normal range) regardless of what I was doing. Perhaps best of all, the BB also made a BIG difference in my heart palpitations. I had hardly any when on it, even when going to sleep or lying on my side. I had no definite side-effects. My doctor took me off the drug because she thought it could have been causing other problems for me unrelated to POTS, but it's starting to look more and more like the drug wasn't the culprit after all. If my health continues to go on the way it has recently, I will probably start taking a BB again. It helped me tremendously.

thanks firewatcher! The more I've thought about this the more I've been thinking this is related to ans stuff. It's like a situation will sometimes tip off a normal amount of stress or anxiety -- and then all of a sudden my body goes completely haywire. Since a lot of the time I seem to react normally to the same exact situations, it makes me think this isn't just "being shy." Yesterday, when I had the strong reaction, I was having a very symptomatic day anyway. I hadn't had enough sleep, and in the am I was having unusually bad tachycardias -- I suspect my increased POTS symptoms and my body's strange reaction to a little bit of stress were related. I will look up that article!

Hello all, I've always been a naturally shy person, and things like public speaking tend to make me nervous. But it's something I've been able to overcome more or less in my adulthood, and now I'm a teacher, so I've gotten fairly used to speaking in front of a large group of adults. Although I wouldn't consider myself a wildly outgoing or charismatic person, I feel like I can be at a social function and be social "enough," without turning red or getting too flustered or anything. However, every once in a while I will have a very extreme reaction to situations that usually only make me mildly nervous. For example, today at a staff meeting, I spoke up and shared some information with a group of about 20 people. I volunteered to speak; I felt perfectly comfortable when I started to speak. But then all of a sudden, my heart was pounding so fast and so hard I could hardly hear anything else, and my voice started shaking so badly I could hardly control it and I sounded all weird and warbly like I was really upset. My whole body trembled, and my hands and legs shook so badly I felt really embarrassed. It seemed like the sort of reaction I might have if I had true social phobia; but I've spoken to this same group of people countless times at other staff meetings and never had this reaction before. Maybe had a momentary increase in hr, but nothing that I ever really noticed. This kind of reaction - wild heart pounding, with full-body trembling that I can't control - has happened at other seemingly odd times. Sometimes when I'm driving in bad traffic, or if I'm running late for something. It's often in situations that might make me a little nervous or tense, but it's just such an EXTREME reaction to the amount of nervousness that I feel. It's like most of the time I barely notice what might be considered "anxiety," and then out of the blue for no real reason I'll have what looks more like an anxiety attack. I've had panic attacks before when I was a teenager and this feels nothing like that - this feels much more physical, and I am always very clear-headed when this happens, and surprised at how my body reacts. Is it possible that this could be related to adrenaline and POTS? I've always attributed it to "just being shy," but when I think about it, it doesn't happen all the time, and it has happened more now, in my adult life, and it never happened when I was younger and more shy.

I googled this, and found many articles saying the generic brand (metoprolol) had been recalled recently (november 2008) but couldn't find anything with a clear reason as to why, beyond vague statements about "quality control." You are probably having trouble getting it because of the recall, but I'd be curious to know more abut why it was recalled if anyone has heard anything.

It may make a difference what your resting/sitting hr is, too. For example, when on beta blockers, my sitting heart rate is about 55 fairly consistently -- so even if my standing hr is 110 (not super high), that's still a 55 bpm difference. The definition of POTS is only a 30 bpm difference. When I'm on beta blockers, I do feel better over all, but I notice I start to feel a little symptomatic (out of breath, tired, dizzy) when my heart rate is around 95-115 -- because my sitting heart rate is so low. I'm glad you feel generally ok on the BB and that it helps, but what I'm saying is, if your tachys aren't very high, but you still "feel" potsy, it could be because your resting hr is low.

I have terrible night-vision and cannot see very well at night at all. I want to get glasses, but I can only afford so many doctors' appointments... I've also noticed that I often don't see well for the first few hours of every morning. I've heard your vision can change during your period due to a change in your bodily water %; in the morning I often feel dehydrated and more potsy, so I've always assumed the blurry vision had to do with a change in my fluid percentage that is rectified once I've had enough to drink.