Rewired Psychology

Understanding Dysautonomia: What Are the Different Types? 🫀🧠✨

​Dysautonomia isn't a single condition, it’s an umbrella term for conditions caused by a malfunction in the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), which controls everything your body does automatically (like heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, and temperature regulation).
​Because stretchy connective tissue can affect blood vessel tone and blood volume, dysautonomia frequently co-occurs alongside hypermobility syndromes, such as hEDS, and HSD.

​Here is a quick breakdown of the primary forms of dysautonomia:

​💓 Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS):
The most well-known form. When moving from lying to standing, blood pools in the lower body. To keep oxygen reaching the brain, the ANS triggers an abnormally high jump in heart rate (often accompanied by dizziness, fatigue, and brain fog) without a persistent drop in blood pressure.

​🩸 Neurocardiogenic Syncope (NCS) / Vasovagal Syncope:
The most common form of dysautonomia. It causes sudden drops in heart rate and blood pressure when standing, standing for long periods, or in response to triggers (like heat or stress), leading to lightheadedness or fainting.

​📉 Orthostatic Hypotension (OH):
A significant and sustained drop in blood pressure upon standing, leading to dizziness, blurred vision, or fainting, because the body struggles to pump blood upward against gravity.

​⚖️ Inappropriate Sinus Tachycardia (IST):
Characterised by an unexplained high resting heart rate (over 100 bpm) or an exaggerated spike with minimal physical effort, regardless of posture.

​🌡️ Pure Autonomic Failure (PAF) & Multiple System Atrophy (MSA):
Rarer, progressive neurological disorders that cause widespread failure of autonomic functions, including severe orthostatic hypotension and temperature regulation issues.

​Whether you experience occasional dizzy spells or manage daily POTS symptoms, understanding your specific autonomic pattern helps in finding the right mix of fluid/salt protocols, compression wear, and nervous system support!

​💬 Which form of dysautonomia or orthostatic intolerance forms part of your journey? Let us know in the comments below! 👇

​🔗 Learn more about , the types and so much more from our friends over at POTS UK 💜
​
- TeamHMSA

Nearly 80% of female adults with ADHD are hypermobile and individuals with ADHD are four times more likely to be hypermobile than their neurotypical peers. You might be thinking, What on earth does ADHD have to do with being bendy? New research suggests that hypermobility, a condition in which the joints have an unusually large range of motion, may be a common thread binding neurodivergence to a range of physical health problems. additu.de/bendy

Early recognition of a CSF leak doesn’t just help the patient. It can help the whole healthcare system.

A patient with a CSF leak may present again and again with:

“migraine” “vertigo” “neck pain” “tinnitus” “fatigue” “brain fog”

But sometimes the biggest clue isn’t where the head hurts.
It’s what happens when the patient stands up.

Think about spontaneous intracranial hypotension (SIH) when a patient describes:

→ A headache that becomes worse when upright and improves after lying flat
→ A headache that is relatively mild on waking but builds through the day
→ A sudden thunderclap headache followed by an orthostatic pattern
→ A new daily persistent headache that initially had a positional component

Unexplained symptoms

And then listen for the symptoms around the headache:

Dizziness or disequilibrium.
Nausea
Muffled hearing or blocked ears
Tinnitus
Posterior neck pain
Cognitive difficulty
Fatigue
Photophobia
Visual blurring

The 2023 multidisciplinary consensus guideline recommends considering SIH in patients presenting with an orthostatic headache.

Because every missed clue can mean another appointment.
Another investigation.
Another treatment for the wrong diagnosis.
And another day that patient remains disabled.

Earlier recognition → earlier investigation → earlier appropriate treatment.

You’ve probably never heard of a CSF leak — I hadn’t either, until I had one.

It’s when the brain fluid leaks, causing severe headaches that ease when lying flat. Many go years undiagnosed.
If you’re a healthcare professional, please repost.

Awareness saves lives. 💙

Did you know there is a Virtual Emergency Care Service (VECS) in Queensland?

Open from 8am to 10pm every day, VECS is a free Queensland Health service for children and adults across Queensland.

VECS can help if you are sick or injured and need to see someone quickly, but it’s not life-threatening. This means you have an alternative to physically visiting an emergency department.

VECS is staffed by real doctors and nurses who can treat a range of emergency conditions virtually such as:

✅acute respiratory illnesses
✅allergic reactions
✅pain
✅infections
✅minor burns
✅children who have a fever
✅gastroenteritis
✅sporting injuries

The VECS team will triage your concern and, if appropriate, place you in a queue to see the Emergency Doctor for a telehealth consultation.

VECS can provide advice, treatment, e-scripts, pathology requests and referrals.

To access VECS, use the Healthdirect Symptom Checker (https://loom.ly/1vhWx7U) or Service Finder (https://loom.ly/8rik1HI) to determine the most appropriate care option.

Remember, in a serious medical emergency, you should always call Triple Zero (000).

In my clinical experience, the triad of MCAS, hEDS, and POTS is the rule, not the exception.

What looks like three separate diagnoses is very often one process expressing itself across multiple systems. Chronic mast cell activation degrades the extracellular matrix, disrupts autonomic regulation, and destabilizes vascular tone, producing the full clinical picture over time.

The patient who arrives having been told they have anxiety, joint hypermobility, and "just how they're built" has usually been failed by a system that evaluates systems in isolation.

Screening for all three, and treating the underlying driver rather than each condition separately, changes the outcome completely.

I cover the full triad in my MCAS course: how to identify it, how to sequence treatment across all three conditions simultaneously, and why addressing the upstream mast cell driver is the intervention that moves all three. If you or your patients sit at this intersection and aren't improving, this is the clinical framework that changes that.

👉️Comment MCAS for the link.

Recently I presented at the Female Health Summit for the Ehlers Danlos Society on a very important and under-researched topic,consent and connection when living in dysregulated bodies. Such an informative summit with loads of learning 🦓💜

Very interesting read

Important New POTS Research Findings:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2025.12.29.696828v1
We’re proud to share the results of a new research study funded by Standing Up to POTS — made possible by the generosity of our donors 💙

This study by Dr. Resia Pretorius, Dr. Satish Raj and colleagues explored a novel biological pathway that may help explain why POTS symptoms occur and how POTS may differ from Long COVID at a molecular level.

🔬 What did the researchers study?

They examined tiny, abnormal protein clumps in the blood called fibrinaloid microclots. These microclots can interfere with blood flow in the smallest blood vessels and may contribute to reduced oxygen delivery to tissues.

🧪 What did they find?

The researchers discovered that:

• People with pre-COVID POTS had distinct molecular changes within these microclots

• These changes were different from those seen in Long COVID, and also different from Long COVID with POTS

• This suggests POTS may have its own biological signature, rather than being solely a nervous-system disorder

🧠 Why does this matter?

If confirmed in future studies, these findings could:

• Improve understanding of the biological mechanisms behind POTS

• Help guide the development of objective tests or biomarkers

• Open the door to new treatment strategies that go beyond symptom management

This research builds on earlier work proposing that microcirculatory dysfunction may play a role in POTS (see https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4426/14/2/170)— and begins to test that idea with real molecular data.

⚠️ Important note:

This is a pre-print still awaiting peer review, and does not yet change clinical care. More studies are needed to confirm and expand these findings. But this is the kind of foundational work needed to move the field forward.

💙 We are deeply grateful to our donors.

This study — and many others — would not be possible without you. Your support allows Standing Up to POTS to fund innovative research aimed at better answers, better treatments, and a better future for people living with POTS. To see other research we’ve funded, visit https://www.standinguptopots.org/research-fund/funded-research-studies

Female Health Summit - The Ehlers Danlos Society Join The Ehlers-Danlos Society for the Female Health Summit, a virtual event happening on March 7, 2026. Tailored for individuals with Ehlers-Danlos syndromes (EDS) and hypermobility spectrum disorders (HSD), as well as the healthcare providers and caregivers who support their care, this summit brin...