Mayo Clinic Day 3

           Today was a hot one! The morning was easy, just information sessions of what POTS is and relaxation techniques. The woman was surprised with how much I knew about POTS and the autonomic nervous system, being pre-med does that. Whenever I have an autonomic nervous system question on a test I get pumped! The woman realized I pretty much knew all the basics about POTS, so we mostly spoke about stress management and relaxation techniques. An interesting thing she did say was how the blood flow can cause stomach pain. Since my blood is not flowing properly in my body, when I do not eat frequent small meals, blood is not constantly assisting in digestion. When I eat a large meal and not frequently a lot of blood goes rushing to my stomach, which causes pain. So the ideal way to eat for POTS patients is small meals or snacks every few hours. She gave me a lot of handouts about foods high in salt, what POTS is, and exercises that are good for POTS patients. Relaxation and training your frontal lobe is also important for POTS patients since we are constantly in “fight or flight” mode, and our body is constantly in a stressed out state. By teaching the frontal lobe to relax the brain is retrained to not always be in a stressed out state, which can help with symptoms, such as lowering heart rate.

            Some relaxation techniques that are helpful in retraining the frontal lobe is deep breathing (breathing from the belly) and muscle relaxation. The teacher also gave me videos on yoga and tai chi. She said there are five criteria that POTS patients need to follow to get control over their bodies. The five criteria are relaxation techniques, exercise, healthy diet, adequate sleep, and spiritual wellness, which is a sense of connection with other people and not isolating yourself from others. She also said to make a list of three things, a joy list, to incorporate into daily life. Some examples include doing yoga, going outside and take pictures, etc… After my information session I went back to my room and took a nap before I had to bring back my heart monitor and BP holster (yes, every 10minutes my BP was being taken and it was very annoying).

            After giving back the monitors, the next test for the day was my sweat test, which, so far, I think is the worst test I had to do. When you walk into the testing room you see a large rectangular box, a human oven, and computers. You are provided with a bathroom to get changed in and shower after the test. After getting changed I lied down on the table and a gold power was sprinkled all over me. The only place that powder wasn’t on was my back and face. The gold powder was made of baking powder, cornstarch, and alizarin red. The alizarin red reacts with sweat and changes the color of the powder from gold to purple. After putting my sunglasses on, the technician put me in the oven and the temperature went up to 104^OF. I had skin thermometers on my stomach and legs, and a thermometer in my mouth. If my oral temperature reaches 100.4^OF then the test would have been stopped. While lying in the human oven I noticed I wasn’t turning purple, even though it was really hot. I have issues with heat intolerance so the heat was making my heart race, and I was doing deep breathing to prevent myself from passing out. I kept trying to talk to the technician and ask him questions, and he would open the window and I would feel the cool air. He told me that the test was more then half way over, the total time was about 45 minutes, and I still wasn’t purple because I wasn’t sweating. By the last 15 minutes or so I finally started sweating, and by the end I was mostly purple but still had some spots of gold left. When the technician finally pulled me out of the human oven room temperature felt cold and it was amazing. It took me awhile to sit up and stand because my heart was racing and I was lightheaded. Since your entire body is covered in sweaty, purple powder, they let you shower, but after the shower I still had a slight purple hue and needed a few more showers. This test was not fun and really hard on my body. I was very foggy and exhausted after this test and after having a late lunch ended up watching the latest episode of New Girl and taking a nap.