What happens with dysautonomia and am I affected?

Sometimes I ask myself what is wrong with me. Sometimes I have something and I don’t understand what it is. I also often don’t know if it has something to do with my basic disease, MSA. What I do know is that this is a disease of the brain, and everything that the brain does by itself can be affected, i.e. everything that we have taken for granted. What is affected is a matter of luck – or rather bad luck. Dysautonomia is in my opinion a bit like Russian Roulette. You can also blame everything on it. I know what it is, but this knowledge doesn’t necessarily help me, at the most so much that I don’t think I’m crazy and overly competitive.

I have made myself a little bit clever what dysautnomia is. Because it can be a part of our illness, or it often is.

The symptoms of dysautonomia include:

  • bradycardia (abnormally low heart rate) or tachycardia (abnormally high heart rate)
  • Highly fluctuating blood pressure, high or low
  • Frequent, large fluctuations in heart rate
  • Orthostatic intolerance 
  • Frequent dehydration
  • Chronic fatigue
  • Heartbeat abnormality 
  • Dizziness and common problems with nausea
  • Syncope (unconsciousness) or “almost” syncope 
  • Low blood volume
  • Swallowing difficulties
  • Pain, stinging in the chest
  • Shortness of breath, bad energy
  • Frequent migraine or headaches
  • Hypersensitivity to light, noise, touch or smell
  • Difficulty of temperature control (no sweating in hot weather and no shivering in cold weather)

Dysautonomia is a group of neurological disorders in which the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is disturbed. This can involve failure of either the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system, or both. The symptoms of dysautonomy can affect any body function or system. The symptoms may be mild or debilitating. They may also increase and decrease in intensity or be continuous. Depending on the nature of the dysautonomia and its cause, patients can cope with the symptoms permanently or, in some cases, recover.

There are many different types of dysautonomia, including Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), which we have treated here before  syncope, orthostatic intolerance (OI), autoimmune autonomic ganglionopathy (AAG), pure autonomic failure (PAF), multisystem atrophy (MSA) and more. While some specific types are rare, dysautonomy itself is not rare. Over 70 million people in the world live with one or more forms of dysautonomy. 

There are also patients who develop dysautonomy as a result of another underlying disease, as is the case with MSA. 

Currently there is no cure for dysautonomia, but research is creating understanding and developing new hope. 

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