Cosmos

The Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS): Pathophysiology, Diagnosis & Management

2013-03-15T01:45:00.001-07:00

Postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS), characterized by orthostatic tachycardia in the absence of orthostatic hypotension, has been the focus of increasing clinical interest over the last 15 years 1. Patients with POTS complain of symptoms of tachycardia, exercise intolerance, lightheadedness, extreme fatigue, headache and mental clouding. Patients with POTS demonstrate a heart rate increase of ≥30 bpm with prolonged standing (5-30 minutes), often have high levels of upright plasma norepinephrine (reflecting sympathetic nervous system activation), and many patients have a low blood volume. POTS can be associated with a high degree of functional disability. Therapies aimed at correcting the hypovolemia and the autonomic imbalance may help relieve the severity of the symptoms. This review outlines the present understanding of the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management of POTS.

The Postural Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS): Pathophysiology, Diagnosis & Management:

(NB: Or in my case, often with "prolonged standing" of less than 30 seconds.)

What is postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome?

2013-03-15T01:42:00.001-07:00

Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) is defined as an abnormal increase in heart rate on becoming upright. There are many causes. Although blood pressure does not necessarily fall, symptoms are similar to low blood pressure and can consist of dizziness, fainting, headache, sweating, shakiness, nausea, poor concentration and memory, discoloured hands and feet, sense of anxiety, chest pains and many others - mostly worse when standing. Treatment can consist of high fluid intake, care with posture, careful fitness training and, in some patients, high salt intake and medication.

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome | Health | Patient.co.uk:

ESA appeals nightmare confirmed

2013-02-27T23:43:00.001-08:00

Employment and support allowance (ESA) is to be stopped when a claimant challenges a decision that they are fit for work, the government has confirmed. Instead, claimants will be forced to declare themselves fit for work in order to try to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) whilst still asking their GP for sick notes (now called fit notes) to maintain their ESA claim.

Only when a mandatory reconsideration has been carried out will the claimant be able to lodge an appeal and once again receive ESA at the assessment rate, until the appeal is decided. There is no limit on how long the DWP can take to carry out a mandatory reconsideration.

ESA appeals nightmare confirmed

Impaired Coordination in Fibromyalgia

2013-02-15T06:34:00.001-08:00

A recent study revealed problems with fine motor control and manual dexterity in fibromyalgia.

Participants performed tasks such as writing, turning over cards, placing a pin, stacking checkers, and picking things up. The fibromyalgia group was slower with both hands than healthy people in the control group.

http://chronicfatigue.about.com/b/2013/02/15/impaired-coordination-in-fibromyalgia.htm

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome & ADHD: What's the Link?

2013-02-13T04:35:00.001-08:00

Researchers concluded that ADHD and ME/CFS may share a common underlying mechanism, and that over time, ADHD may develop into a syndrome chronic fatigue and pain. (It's unclear whether this would most appropriately be considered a new form of ADHD or a subset of ME/CFS.)

http://chronicfatigue.about.com/b/2013/02/13/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-adhd-whats-the-link.htm

Post-Exertional Malaise: When The Other Shoe Drops

2013-02-12T04:14:00.001-08:00

We recover from muscle exertion at a very different rate than other people. The progressive deterioration over a period of days, rather than immediately after exercise, is a hallmark of ME/CFS. And if exercise is continued daily for several weeks, things almost inevitably get worse.

Other chronic illnesses may include fatigue, but many of these types of conditions will improve in terms of aerobic capacity and exercise tolerance with regular exercise. This is not true of ME/CFS.

DWP to blame for fitness-to-work tests fiasco, MPs say

2013-02-08T03:59:00.001-08:00

The government should accept much of the blame for distressing and expensive fitness-to-work tests that have caused "misery and hardship" to thousands of benefit claimants, according to a report by MPs released on Friday.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/08/dwp-fitness-to-work-fiasco

Living wage – Ecuador shows the way

2013-02-06T07:10:00.001-08:00

In Ecuador where left-wing President Rafael Correa is standing for re-election, the government has introduced a minimum wage, and what they call a ‘Dignity’ wage for the private sector. Paying the national minimum wage is a legal requirement, but paying the Dignity (i.e. Living) wage is not.

Instead, it is a legal requirement for companies to pay the Dignity wage to all employees if they are to pay dividends to their shareholders.

This means that pressure is then redirected to company shareholders to ensure that their company is paying the Dignity wage, as a minimum, to all staff. Shareholders in search of dividends (or sale value) are then left to apply pressure to their own firms.

http://www.leftfutures.org/2013/02/living-wage-ecuador-shows-the-way/

Enough food for everyone, if…

2013-01-31T01:25:00.001-08:00

Via: Make Wealth History

5 Tough Choices You Face When Chronically Ill or in Pain

2013-01-31T00:53:00.001-08:00

Suffering from chronic pain or illness—or, as is often the case, both—can feel like a full-time job. One reason for this is that we must constantly assess and evaluate if we’re managing our health and our relationships as skillfully as possible. This ongoing decision making makes up a major part of the workload in this full-time job—a position we certainly never applied for! Here are five tough choices we continually face. There aren’t easy answers to the issues they raise: that’s why they’re tough choices.

A Good Night’s Sleep? Not with ME/CFS

2013-01-31T00:46:00.001-08:00

Some of us don’t actually sleep as most people know it, but rather move back and forth in a zombie-like state of limbo between shallow catnaps and heavy-lidded and uncomprehending consciousness. We could be called “awake” but we have no energy to move, and cognitive ability is sketchy and ephemeral.

This is ME - Myalgic Encephalomyelitis

2013-01-25T01:10:00.000-08:00

ME isn't just being "tired all the time", it's an "invisible illness" - even if we look OK, we feel terrible, ill and exhausted after just the tiniest bit of activity, and then need to rest completely for hours or days afterwards. Exercising too much or pushing our bodies makes us worse. It's like having the most severe flu, and trying to run a marathon, at the same time. All of the time. Our muscles have no energy, it's impossible to think straight, and literally dozens of other symptoms, affecting our sleep, unbearable pain, dizziness, affecting our immune systems, hormones, emotions, heart, digestion, being too hot or cold, being too sensitive to light, noise and smell, and more.

ME/CFS: What We Know About Causes

2013-01-24T01:06:00.000-08:00

Noted expert on ME/CFS, Dr. Kenneth J. Friedman, discusses what is known about the causes of ME/CFS.

Laundry & Grocery Shopping With Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

2013-01-23T09:57:00.001-08:00

Two of the most dreaded household task for those of us with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome seem to be laundry and grocery shopping. They're exhausting, and each one has its own special forms of torture for us.

Program Your Thermostat to Slightly Raise the Temperature at Night for Better Sleep

2013-01-23T08:59:00.001-08:00

Sleeping well can require a lot of work, especially when you have common sleep problems, and your body temperature plays a role. Sleep science blog Sleepdex points out that because your temperature drops, raising it during the night may help you sleep better:

Pesticide used by UK farmers is linked to long-term brain damage

2013-01-23T08:57:00.001-08:00

Several hundred farmers in the UK are believed to have suffered debilitating health problems from exposure to organophosphate pesticides (OPs), as an Ecologist investigation earlier this year revealed. A large number of them were sheep farmers, following government orders in the 1980s and 90s to treat their animals with the chemical to protect against the spread of a disease called sheep scab.

Other groups also known to have been affected include veterans from the Gulf War, who were exposed to pesticides to protect them from pests and mosquitoes, and airline pilots and cabin crew, who can be exposed to organophosphates in engine oil.

Piling On Diagnoses with Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

2013-01-23T08:40:00.001-08:00

In my case (and countless others,) minor fibromyalgia-based dysfunction in the immune system may have lead to changes that triggered first one autoimmune reaction and then another. It's like knocking over dominoes.

Severe heart and brain abnormalities in ME

2013-01-23T07:13:00.001-08:00

Professor Newton, MP Ian Swales and ME sufferer Barbara Kell on the BBC 'Look North' programme (North East and Cumbria), 2 February 2012.

Not Fatigue After All? New Model Suggests Other Symptoms Better Explain Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)

2013-01-23T06:55:00.001-08:00

Concentrating almost exclusively on fatigue and/or pain whilst ignoring minor and overlap symptoms may only serve to ‘ring-fence’ ME/CFS research in a way that is artificial and unproductive.

There are tentative findings that a sensory gating deficit is also associated with ME/CFS. This is a testable hypothesis that, if confirmed, might suggest common physiological aberrations and understanding the pathology of these other conditions may help unearth the core pathology of ME/CFS.

The muscle in ME: It isn't ALL deconditioning!

2013-01-23T06:14:00.001-08:00

Should ME patients exercise? Much of the current thinking about CFS and ME is driven by models of deconditioning and the notion that a little regular exercise will be beneficial. That is true; some exercise is good for us all. But what if exercise results in a huge delivery of free radicals, not because of disuse of muscle and deconditioning, but because there is something organically wrong with muscle metabolism? What value exercise in these circumstances?

These are crucial questions, and it is important to remember that the current evidence for deconditioning is not based on scientific investigations of muscle, but on suppositions about patients with "fatigue".

Gazpacho Helps Lower Blood Pressure

2013-01-23T05:59:00.001-08:00

Led by Alexander Medina-Remon from the University of Barcelona, Spain the study finds that consumption of the cold vegetable soup is inversely associated with the incidence of high blood pressure (hypertension), which itself is "an unequivocal risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, and is the main risk factor for stroke in both men and women."

Postexertional malaise, the pathognomonic symptom of ME, is unusual in any psychiatric condition

2013-01-23T05:43:00.001-08:00

This article reviews the diagnostic criteria for both myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) (ie, chronic fatigue syndrome) and fibromyalgia (FM) and describes how to differentiate them from depressive and anxiety disorders, the psychiatric conditions with which they are most often confused. The patients in the following Case Vignettes have ME and/or FM; not all have a psychiatric condition.

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: The shocking disease

2013-01-23T01:56:00.001-08:00

M.E.is primarily neurological, but also involves cognitive, cardiac, cardiovascular, immunological, metabolic, respiratory, hormonal, gastrointestinal and musculo-skeletal dysfunctions and damage. M.E. causes an inability to maintain bodily homeostasis. More than 64 individual symptoms of M.E. have been scientifically documented.

Why myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) may kill you

2013-01-23T01:49:00.001-08:00

Recently, Jason et al (2006) reported that the mean age of patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome dying from heart failure, i.e. 58.7 years, is significantly lower than the age of those dying from heart failure in the general US population, i.e. 83.1 years. These findings implicate that ME/CFS is a risk factor to cardio-vascular disorder.

Viral reactivation a likely link between stress and heart disease

2013-01-23T01:43:00.001-08:00

Identifying a solid link between a reactivated virus and heart disease is important because of the prevalence of EBV, a human herpes virus that causes infectious mononucleosis and several different types of tumors. An estimated 95 percent of Americans have been infected with the virus by adulthood, and once a person is infected, the virus remains dormant in the body. It can be reactivated without causing symptoms of illness, but reactivation has potential to create chaos in the immune system.