Katie Ledecky Has POTS, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

U.S. Olympian Katie Ledecky seemed fairly easy within the water on the Paris Olympics, the place she swam to 2 gold medals, a silver and a bronze, to convey her profession Olympic medal haul to 14. However beneath the floor, issues haven’t been utterly easy swimming for Ledecky for the previous 9 years. The nine-time Olympic gold medalist has needed to cope with POTS. And on this case, POTS stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.

Every of the phrases in POTS is a clue to what the situation is. “Postural” means that’s needed to do with how your physique is positioned. The phrase “Orthostatic” refers to standing upright. “Tachycardia” is when your coronary heart fee exceeds 100 beats per minute. And “Syndrome” is when you’ve gotten a gaggle of signs occurring collectively. In her just lately revealed memoir entitled Simply Add Water: My Swimming Life, Ledecky chronicled how she was recognized with POTS after the 2015 swimming world championship held in Russia.

POTS is a pool drawback—not a swimming pool one however a state of affairs the place blood is pooling in your arms, stomach, pelvis and legs and never sufficient is getting up into your head and mind. Now, sometimes, if you rise up, round 10% to fifteen% of your blood will fall to the decrease half of your physique due to, you already know, gravity. Since this implies much less blood to that spherical factor that sits in your neck, chances are you’ll sometimes and quickly really feel a bit lightheaded right here and there, particularly in case you rise up quite rapidly.

However you’ll be able to thank your leg muscle mass and autonomic nervous system for minimizing such emotions. Usually, your leg muscle mass will squeeze as you stand to maintain blood flowing upwards and your autonomic nervous system will set off the discharge of epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine. These two hormones can even assist with blood movement to your noggin—a extremely technical time period in your head and mind—by growing your coronary heart fee and tightening your blood vessels a bit.

Whenever you’ve acquired POTS and rise up, extra blood than regular swimming pools down within the decrease half of your physique. And your blood vessels could not reply usually to norepinephrine or epinephrine. Due to this fact, your coronary heart tries to beat even sooner to compensate.

In her memoir, Ledecky described POTS as follows: “I pool blood within the vessels under my coronary heart after I stand. My physique then releases additional norepinephrine or epinephrine, which provides further stressors on my coronary heart, making it beat sooner. Which, in flip, brings on dizziness, fainting, and exhaustion.”

You may relieve these signs of POTS by mendacity down once more. However after all you’ll be able to’t merely take life and POTS mendacity down, so to talk. Whereas POTS itself received’t be life-threatening, it may be fairly life-altering in a foul method. In any case, take into consideration how dizziness, fainting and exhaustion can have an effect on your life. Then there’s the opposite doable signs of POTS akin to coronary heart palpitations, anxious emotions, mind fog. shakiness, extreme sweating, shortness of breath, chest ache, complications, sleep points, bloating, a pale face and purple discoloration of physique elements which are decrease than your coronary heart.

The difficulty is you’ll be able to go a very long time—even years—affected by POTS with out being correctly recognized. Not all well being professionals will not be accustomed to POTS. And medical visits sometimes are now not than quarter-hour—much less time than it takes Ledecky to swim the 1500 meter freestyle—which isn’t sufficient time to essentially talk about your whole signs and experiences with a doc.

So, you’ll have to notably proactive about getting the correct work-up for POTS. You could have to ask to get a tilt desk take a look at. That is form of what it appears like. You lay on a desk that may then be tilted completely different angles, going from you being utterly flat to being in an virtually upright place. At every place, your coronary heart fee, blood strain and probably your blood oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide ranges get measured. With POTS inside 10 minutes of going upright, you are inclined to expertise a rise in your coronary heart fee of greater than 30 beats per minute or a coronary heart fee that exceeds 120 beats per minute.

It’s possible you’ll bear different checks to test the perform of nerves that have an effect on your sweating and coronary heart and rule out different doable causes of your signs. This could embrace urine checks, blood checks, imaging checks, respiration checks and even biopsies of your nerves. The sorts of checks could differ relying in your medical historical past and circumstances.

Presently, the particular causes of POTS stay unknown. It usually begins after your physique has skilled some form of stress akin to being pregnant, surgical procedure, trauma, or a viral sickness. There’s some proof that this may very well be an autoimmune illness the place your immune system assaults your regular physique tissue. However the jury continues to be out on that.

And not using a actual recognized trigger, remedy is concentrated extra on managing the signs. This ceaselessly consists of including slightly extra salt to your food plan and ensuring that you’re consuming loads of fluids to maintain your blood quantity excessive sufficient. In some instances, chances are you’ll take drugs to facilitate blood movement to your mind akin to fludrocortisone, midodrine, phenylephrine or beta-blockers. Sporting compression stockings in your legs could assist as nicely cope with orthostatic intolerance, which is principally when it’s laborious to cope with getting and standing up.

POTS may be very irritating to cope with, particularly since others will not be accustomed to the situation and the influence. Due to this fact, having correct psychological well being assist may be essential too.

One different factor which will assist orthostatic intolerance is train, together with, drum roll please, swimming. Ledecky, in case you didn’t know, form of does this already. So, it’s a completely happy coincidence that what she does as a career can on the similar time be helpful for her situation. It might aid you as nicely in case you have POTS. After all, you don’t should win 14 Olympic medals and 21 world championship gold medals whereas doing it.