Is POTS Just Anxiety?

Have you ever stood up from your chair and felt your heart rate take off like you just sprinted a flight of stairs? Your vision might go gray, the room tilts a little bit, you sit back and your pulse will not come back to baseline for 10 minutes. And every doctor you have seen has told you the same thing. Your labs look fine. Your scans look fine.

It's probably anxiety. Maybe try drinking more water. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's a teenager who used to play three sports and now can't stand up to brush their teeth. Maybe it's the version of yourself you've been quietly mourning since you had COVID.

You know something's wrong, you can feel it in your body and nobody can name it. Well, today on Dialed In Health, we're sitting down with a doctor who does name it. I'm here with Dr. Cooper Dykstra, the founder of Brain Health and Chiropractic here in Sioux Falls. Dr.

Cooper is a fellow of the International Board of Functional Neurology and a certified functional medicine practitioner. He's also treated over a thousand complex neurological cases and patients drive in from all over including South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska to come and see him. So his thing is the thing that most providers can't see. He understands POTS, dysautonomia, post-concussion syndrome, chronic dizziness, the condition the medical system keeps calling anxiety. In the next 30 minutes, you're going to walk away knowing exactly what POTS actually is, why your doctor missed it, why salt and fluids are not the answer, what is really happening in the brain when you stand up, how long COVID and concussions hide inside a POTS diagnosis, and what the four-day brain reset program actually looks like hour by hour.

Dr. Cooper is going to bust the biggest myths, tell you exactly what to do this week if you suspect you might have POTS, and give you the answers to ask a provider so you can tell if they actually know what they're doing. If you are tired of being told it's in your head, this episode is for you. Health and wellness is confusing. There's a new trend every week.

Everyone's got an opinion, and half the time, you can't tell what's legit and what's just good marketing. And we get it. We're in it too. Welcome to Dialed In Health. I'm Melissa Goodwin.

Every episode, we bring in the people who actually do this work, providers, practitioners, the experts who seek clients and patients every day. We ask the questions you'd ask if you were sitting across from them so you can find the right people, make better decisions, and feel confident about what's out there, whether it's peptides, gut health, water quality, ADHD, biohacking, or something you've never heard of, we're covering it. So let's get into it. Let's get dialed in. That's a lot to go through, but I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who have been experiencing these symptoms that are really excited to hear from you today.

So thanks for being on the show, Dr. Cooper. Awesome. Thank you for the introduction. Yeah, you have a chiropractic background.

You also have some additional training and education. So tell us how you started to start working with patients with POTS and dysautonomia. What were you seeing and what made you want to dig into this further? Yeah, so like a lot of other practitioners that are kind of working on cases like this, they've went through it with their own experience, right? So I was in a car accident when I was 14 years old, got ejected out of a vehicle, had lots of issues with my leg.

I couldn't move my leg for about six weeks and had a lot of post concussion symptoms that I didn't even really recognize until way later. So I mean, this is, I gotta think how old I am. I'm 33 now. And it was, so it was a good like 16, at least 16 years of pretty aggressive brain symptoms of depression, head pressure. I did get the standing lightheadedness.

I never was diagnosed with POTS, but the therapy that helps with POTS made a huge difference in my life. Okay. You know, it's sort of like the concussion seemed to pick up steam. I would say like 10, 15 years ago, people started talking about that. But back probably when you had a concussion, it was sort of like heal and move on, right?

Yeah, I didn't even have people really look at that side of things with me. I mean, people were a little hyper focused on my leg because that wasn't moving, but I had all these other symptoms going on. And I find that with a lot of other cases too. So people were focusing on your leg. Tell me about the other symptoms you were having that maybe were not your leg.

Yeah. So some of the other symptoms that I was dealing with, like along with my leg is I had pretty hardcore depression in the winter. A lot of times a lot of head pressure from, and I had head pressure that was pressure from the inside out, which we'll talk a little bit more about. That's more of a dis-autonomic type headache. You can also get headaches and head pressure, like a squeezing like pressure around the head.

That's going to be a trigeminal type headache. So same part of the brain, just a different mechanism. Okay. Then you can get the neck based headaches that wrap around the top of the head. I get those.

Yeah. Like cervicogenic type headache. Yeah. Really common after whiplash or neck issues. A couple other symptoms that I dealt with was anxiety, social anxiety and stuff.

Like I was also 14 years old. Like is this just like who I am or is this like, but I had also had a concussion, but a lot of that anxiety stuff has subsided a lot since I've balanced out my brain and been able to move forward with that. So tell, tell me, I never really heard of pots until COVID. I ran into someone who has said that their daughter had pots and I was like, what is, what is that? And I still didn't really understand it.

So for those folks out there who have no idea what this is, explain to us what pots is. So pots is when you're laying on your back and you stand up in over 10 minutes, you have an increase in heart rate by 30 points. Okay. What we find in the office is we do tilt table testing on patients that were suspicious with pots. We find a lot of times that even at like five, 10 degrees, even if there's not a change in the heart rate, like you're seeing a lot of changes in symptoms.

Like when you're communicating with the patient, there's head pressure going on and dizziness and nausea and it's like five, 10 degrees. Like you should not be, you should be able to go up and down on a tilt table. No problem. No symptoms at least 10 times. So that's like a baseline goal that I do have with every patient with the care plans too.

So if someone does have that fluctuation in their heart rate, is that right? Yep. If they have that fluctuation, what other problems might they be experiencing in their life? Like what is pots? What are the pots things that cause issues?

Yeah. So that's the piece they look at because of the communication between the heart, the brain and the adrenals with all of that. But some other symptoms that you'll be feeling with pots, the pressure, that dysautonomic headache that I was talking about, the pressure from the inside out, really, really common. Another one that I find with patients is when you close your eyes and you feel like you're on a boat, like this like side to side swaying, super, super common with pots and kind of a weird one. A lot of people are, they'll say that to say that one to a doctor and then they're not really sure some sort of dizziness.

Dizziness can get a little bit funky too. Like in the descriptions of dizziness, it's not like your typical vertigo dizziness, like where the room is moving. That's kind of going back to like, you feel like you're moving, but also like I've heard it where patients feel like they're out of body almost with their head, like their head feels like it's off their head, which I know again, we're talking about neurology. So it gets a little crazy here. So yeah.

But all of that stuff ties back. They all sound like very different symptoms, but they're, it all ties back into the same parts of the brain and the brainstem. So why do doctors miss this so often? Are they just not trained in what this is or what? Yeah.

Tell me about like why this is such a big problem for people. I think doctors are really well trained for what they're looking for. Right. You know, you're looking for pathologies with a lot of that. So like a traditional neurologist is going to look for the pathologies.

Like you know, if you're, if you're over 30 points, like on your heart rate, on your tilt table test, like you're going to get diagnosed with POTS and be able to kind of find a, find that path. You may not have relief with that path, but it'll at least give you, get you in a path in that direction. But like for the patient that does the tilt table test and they're at 28 points, that's then what do you do? I mean, like, cause you don't fall into that protocol, right? So then you fall into this like functional category and that's where this clinic does really well.

Like people are told that their labs are, are normal. Their testing is normal. Their MRIs are clean. That's kind of why people like kind of fall on this runaround. It's not that doctors aren't qualified to, you know, help with this.

It's just like, what do you do with the in-betweeners that like, Hey, I still don't feel good, but I don't have positive tests too. But it usually comes down to weak pathways in the brain. There can be gut complications going on. And really like the autonomics are just so imbalanced that you can't actually develop a rest response to recover properly. So what do doctors do if they say, and it seems like a lot of people don't do a tilt test and then in the traditional medical feet, in the traditional medical environment, what do doctors typically do for POTS if they suspect it or affirm it?

Typically with POTS, you'll do a tilt table test. Once you get the positive tilt table test, can go on beta blockers to help with blood pressure and usually told to electrolytes and salt. Okay. And does that work for most people? I might have some symptom relief.

Again, it just depends on, I'm not a very good person to answer some of these because it really depends on the cause. Sure. Right. A lot of times. So like kind of a small tangent here, but like the way that I explain a lot of these, you can have a physical concussion to the head, a chemical concussion or a social concussion.

Now all of these things can affect your autonomics and affect your brainstem. So you can injure your brain physically and that can damage the brainstem and mess with the wiring. But you can also have a gut issue that creates a lot of inflammation in the brain, which can down regulate vagal function into the body and allow it not allow your body to rest very well, leading to like a dysautonomia or POTS. Or you can have a lot of stress. Like when you're real, when you're younger, like had a kind of rough upbringing and you're stuck with that tiger in the room, your autonomics don't know how to relax.

So longterm, like the compound effect of having that imbalance with those autonomics is what leads to that can lead to like this POTS diagnosis and stuff like that too. Got it. Okay. So, um, POTS can be caused by sort of seem like a lot of people got a pot strain COVID is that because of the chemical then kind of concussion that you're talking about or Yeah. So I would kind of classify that as like a chemical concussion.

So with COVID, um, the ACE two receptor site in the body, the spike protein in COVID really liked that receptor site. Okay. Um, and I've heard another doctor I was talking with talk about COVID as like COVID was kind of like a skeleton key. So it would like, because there are so many ACE receptor sites in the body, like the spike protein could go in and create a bunch of re-cavic and create a bunch of inflammation and stuff. The piece where with COVID, where there are a lot of ACE receptor sites was in the brain stem.

And so because it's in the brainstem, that's where your parasympathetics live. So your parasympathetics are your rest response and recovery response for your body, like your vagus nerve. Um, and then your fight or flight nerves, your sympathetic nerves are all, they all sit in your spine from your T one to T 12 in your thoracic spine. So because people are getting so much inflammation in the brainstem, I was doing exams. I mean, this is all kind of new, right?

Since 2020. So when I started doing exams, I was like, I had worked with concussions, concussions and brain injuries and stuff for a couple of years before then I was doing exams on long haul COVID. And I was like, this looks exactly like a concussion. And even like with, when people are losing taste and smell, a lot of patients that I saw with smell, they actually would lose smell in just one nostril. Oh, interesting.

Once you started testing it, like, cause I was testing it like a concussion. So you were kind of investigating a little bit more. Sure. Yeah. So tell me about the word dysautonomia.

So I know you have that on your site and I was like, I don't know what that word means. So explain dysautonomia pots, how they are related or not related. Yeah. So dysautonomia is basically a big fancy word that means dysfunctional autonomics. Now your autonomics are your fight or flight response and your rest and rest, digest and recovery response.

Okay. Yep. So that's kind of like the global term for dysfunctional autonomics. Pots is like, I would just call it like an extreme example of dysautonomia. So it's like you got to a certain level, a diagnosable level of dysautonomia.

Okay. Yep. So if I have pots or dysautonomia, the beginning stages or early stages of pots or maybe not quite as severe as pots, what might be happening? Am I passing out? When I stand up, like what might be happening to me?

At the beginning phase of pots. At any phase. Yeah. Tell me. Yeah.

Like getting middle end. Yeah. So like with pots, the typical finance, like you'll start seeing them. If you stand up too fast, you'll pass out. Okay.

I mean, those are like severe pots cases, like where you're actually like losing consciousness and stuff. Cause like, you're not able to get enough blood flow up to the head and it's actually a compensation mechanism of the, of the brain to do that. Cause it's trying to get you to the floor to take you out of gravity. Oh wow. To get blood flow up to the head.

Cause you have brain can't survive without blood. Right. What else might you be experiencing? So someone that says, like, I think I might have this. What would they, what would they feel or, or see?

Yeah. So some other things, um, because mass cell activation syndrome is so tied with in with pots as well. What is that? So mass cell activation syndrome is this like over overactive mass cells in the body that create a lot of inflammation and kind of interesting symptoms. We'll say with the immune system, so basically your immune system is just like on high alert all the time.

So like you eat the wrong food, lots of food sensitivities or like hot water or a hot room, like we'll make your body like flushed and stuff like that. That's a degranualization of those mass cells. So mass cell activation, you said it could happen if you have like pots or something. Or just out of no me, what else could be happening? So symptoms with that mass cell, like it'd be taken as taking a hot shower and be really symptomatic.

Okay. Should be relaxing for most people. Mass cell. It's like avoid hot showers at all. You feel sick.

You feel dizzy. You feel like you're going to pass out. And it's because, because pots is a, a massive imbalance in your autonomics, anything that over regulate or creates more of an imbalance of that autonomic system, like doesn't have enough rest response is going to create a flare for pots. Right. So like you're going to be, the more stressed your brain is like bad sleep, low hydration and food sensitivities.

Like, let's say gluten is like always like irritating your gut. That's going to create more of a dysfunction in your autonomics leading to more symptoms. Just makes everything worse. Makes everything worse. Okay.

So the first thing like when addressing like a pots case is trying, trying our best to figure out what the root causes. You don't always know the root cause. So a good mentor of mine taught me that sometimes the best action is just to start doing the care plan. Like you can sit and try and figure stuff out all the time, but sometimes the best move forward is just to get started. Okay.

Cause like, I mean, you can go, a lot of these patients say they're a doctor, doctor, doctor, and it's like, okay, like haven't really done much of a game plan yet. Like what if we try and start activating this brain and starting to balance it and see where we're at after that? So I read that the average patient weights goes through, you know, the diagnostic delays about six years and 70% of them are told it's anxiety for the first. Yeah. I've, I've heard that story so many times and you feel crazy.

I would imagine like if you, you walk into a place and they tell you, oh, it's anxiety. Here's a pill. And then you still feel the same way. Why is it so hard for the medical system to see this diagnose this? I think going back to the diagnostic markers, right?

If it doesn't fit and that's a whole topic, you know, like with insurance models and stuff, like if you don't fall into that diagnostic marker, I mean, there's just, it doesn't, insurance isn't going to cover it. And then there's no, no game plan with that. So having it fall into the functional category just makes it, makes it hard. Quick break. This episode is brought to you by Vitality Growth Labs.

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So tell us a little bit about what is actually happening in the brain. So, you know, maybe your heart races when you stand up, the mismatch, you know, we're told to drink salt and fluids. What's wrong with salt and fluids? Tell me why that doesn't work. So there's, there's nothing wrong with electrolytes and fluids, but it may not be getting to the root cause.

So getting back to most important thing out of this whole podcast is the imbalance in the brain is an absolute foundation for having a more functional brain. So salt and fluids, that's going to be one thing to take stress off the body. Cause like we need electrolytes, like one perspective, massive perspective shift that I had, it was like, okay, when people are sick and they end up in urgent care and I've heard it over and over, first thing they do is give you fluids. Yeah. So I mean, electrolytes as a foundation, like it just shows you like even, even traditional models, every model fluids and hydration is like essential.

So that's probably really, really essential for a case that's really, really not feeling good, right? Like when people are on a daily basis, like pots, most of us are probably walking around massively dehydrated, massively stressed out, massively low on sleep. So just probably fixing those simple things first, probably helps some people, but it's not going to make your symptoms go away necessarily. Yep. And I mean, those are foundational things, you know, like good diet, good nutrition, hydration, like those are all foundational things.

But the part that, that we can help you with at this office is like finding the underlying cause that's really, really making the brain so imbalanced, finding the autonomic dysfunction and finding like, are your eyes moving well? Are your, is your vestibular system working and all of those things is your tilt table, even if it's not a positive at the hospital, like are you still getting really symptomatic and not being able to take in gravity? Those are all major, major stresses on the brain. And once you start balancing that out, um, body doesn't have to stress out so much. So then it's not going to use so much energy, crash the brain and lead to more pots.

And fatigue over and over. So you said the pots diagnosis is you said it's 30% or 30 point increase in, in heart rate when you tilt it up, stand up, stand up. So if you are at that 28 point increase, what happens then? What can you able, are you able to help them? Yeah.

So we work on cases like that week after week. So they've been told you don't have pots. Yep. Yep. And so it's pretty, I use the analogy of a personal trainer at the gym to work on muscles.

If you're, if you're weak with certain muscles in your body, you'll work on strengthening that. If your autonomics are weak, you got to do the tilt table therapy. You got to do the audit, the eye exercises. You got to do the vestibular therapy. Um, got to make sure you're adjusted well and make sure you can handle adjustments too in the office.

Um, so we have gentle ways to adjust patients and some patients just don't need their neck adjusted too. Cause it's too sensitive with the dizziness and stuff. So this was made for you by a patient. Did that patient have pots? That patient had pots.

Yeah. Tell me what you can about what happened with this patient. How did they get better? Yeah. So with this patient, they have kids at home.

It was a long haul COVID case. Okay. Um, just never quite got his energy back after COVID. Um, works a lot, works at a desk, a lot of screen time. So going back to stress, I mean, that's a lot of stress on the body with a lot of screen time and focusing in, um, I think for kids at home.

So that's stressful. A lot of stress. Yep. A lot of stress with that. So yeah, we, we do the same thing we always do.

We started with an exam, found the weaknesses in the body, in the body, um, whether it's right sided or left sided in the brainstem and cerebellum. And then we did a tilt table test. Um, he got pretty symptomatic already at like 10, 15 degrees with that. So we knew that that was like the first thing that we had to address. So gravity is, is one of the main stressors on our body.

Cause like when we're standing up, like we're taking in more gravity than when we're laying down. So as a clinician, like we have, you have to be able to take in gravity before any other systems are going to start working well. So that's why the tilt table therapy is so important because you're training the body to not only feel good flat like this out of gravity, but feel good at multiple different degrees of gravity too. Okay. So once we were able to get his tilt table up and my clinical goal is to get people to be asymptomatic 10 times up and down on the tilt table is within the four days.

So what does that therapy look like? You just go up, ride the tilt table up and down. So yeah, well, I would not think it's that fun to start, right? Cause it's usually some trauma responses from a tilt table test at the hospital. Cause it just makes you feel like garbage cause you're taking in gravity and stuff.

But no, what we do at the office is we start really slow. We go right up to like the symptom threshold and we'll do some therapy. So like cerebellar therapies like figure eights or vibration can be a really good way to calm down the autonomics. So we basically are retraining you to have a rest response and all these different degrees of gravity. Okay.

So if you're up at 15 degrees and you're like, Oh man, I feel like hot and like nauseous and stuff like that. And dizzy, we're going to do figure eights and do some other therapies or nerve stems to get your nervous system down, calm down in order to be able to keep working up through those, those thresholds. And does it stick? Do they have to keep coming back for this? How much therapy do you need and over what period of time?

Yeah. Every case is different with that severity. Like what does your diet look like? What's your nutrition exercise? Well exercise can be tough with pots, but depends on like where the patient is at.

I'd say a lot of patients that do. So this is a shout out for functional medicine patients that do take care of themselves like with, and they're going to a functional medicine practitioner and stuff like that. They do really, really well with the therapy because we're not fighting an underlying inflammatory and got stress as much in the, but someone who hasn't done any of that and we can help with patients with that too. Like it can be a little harder to, it's going to take a lot more extra work because like you got to fix your diet as anyone who's done a diet knows that it's just, it's tough. Yeah.

Like when you're taking foods out and stuff like that. And if you get conflicting information, it's hard to know what's always, what's always accurate. So tell us like if you were to tell a 16 year old that is, has pots symptoms, they were trying to explain to them what they have and how you can help them. What would you say to that 16 year old kid? Yeah.

So I would, I would talk to that patient and I would say first I would do my beautiful drawing of the brain on my whiteboard at the office. So I would talk about the cortex, the big bumpy part of the brain. That's the part that makes us able to think and talk to people and socialize. And then I would talk about the brainstem. The brainstem is the part that's our subconscious.

So that's underneath our conscious part of our brain. That's all the stuff that we don't have to think about. That's a software of everything. So that includes like your vestibular system, your eye movements, your balance centers, and those sorts of things. And your autonomic responses in the body.

And then the cerebellum overlaying it is your coordination area. So all of these parts of the brain need to talk well with each other in order to have high function in life. What's going on with pots is that you are, when you stand up too fast and you're taking gravity, you can't get enough blood flow up to the head. So your heart is going to have to pump really fast to try and get enough blood flow up to the head. If it can't do it fast enough, it'll just lay you flat on the floor.

Right? So that's the compensation mechanism that we were talking about. So you have to, in order to get the rest of the symptoms better, because it's not ever just pots, the head pressure and the dizziness and those things, like we need to get your autonomics balanced. And we know that your autonomics are balanced when your tilt table testing is better, your eye movements are better, your balance testing is better in the office through all these different sensory inputs. What does pot stand for?

Postural orthostatic tachycardial syndrome. Yeah. Pots is definitely easier. Yep. So posh it's all it is.

It's like postural. So it has to do with position. Yeah. Orthostatic with the heart, the heart, basically tachycardial, the heart racing, okay. A gathering of symptoms as a syndrome.

Okay. Got it. All right. So pots has gone up 30% since COVID. Or at least the amount of patients meeting pots criteria has gone up 30% since COVID.

So what do you think is happening? It has to do with the spike protein in COVID and the spike protein liking the brainstem so much, the affinity that it has with that and the inflammation that happens in the brainstem. So like I kind of go back to the concussion, like with a physical concussion, you'll jar your brain and the brainstem will actually get kind of torsioned like this, creating a lot of physical inflammation. Just like if you would roll your ankle, you get inflammation and it swells. You're getting that kind of inflammation from COVID as well.

And from even from gut infections, any, any inflammatory cause is going to can lead to inflammation in the brain like that too. And we're like, we were just getting more stressed. So you'll just get more busy. Stress stress, stress never helps anything, but stresses, stress is good too. Like, I mean, like with exercise and stuff, but like too much stresses.

Yeah, it's, it's hard on the autonomics. So you think about disease, you know, disease and stress and all the things that are concussions, you know, sports and car accidents. You're going to be a busy guy. Yeah. Yeah.

There's, there's, there's a lot of, a lot of people that need help. Yeah. Yep. And yep. So tell me about hypermobility and I'm not sure if I'm going to say this right.

Is it Ehlers Danlos connection? Yeah. Ehlers Danlos syndrome or EDS, a lot of people will call it EDS is a hyperconnectivity disorder that is genetic. So like your connective tissue in your body is way too loose. Okay.

So just for severity example, just as easy to picture it this way. I had one surgeon that I was talking to once and he was doing a shoulder surgery on someone with Ehlers Danlos syndrome and he couldn't even stitch the tissues because it was, it was like jelly, like the muscle was like jelly. There was like no integrity to it. So that's the image that I have in my head, like with Ehlers Danlos after I heard that. And that's happening.

If it's genetic, it's not just your shoulder, right? Like it's happening with all your tissues. So again, with, with pots, one of the main mechanisms of like how to interpret gravity is actually through your baroreceptors. And your what receptors? Your baroreceptors in your arteries.

Okay. And those are like stretch receptors that help you and through your neck as well. But pressure receptors that help you relay information to the brainstem to tell you how much blood flow to get up to the head. Okay. Ehlers Danlos, if the rubber band has been feels like it's been stretched a thousand times kind of deal, you're not going to be able to get very good feedback from that pressure system, right?

Cause it's, it's pressure going into like such an elastic tissue. So that's part of the reason you'll see a lot of that. And then the other part of the triad is that mass cell activation syndrome. And because the integrity of the gut is so low with real Stanlos syndrome, you're way more prone for leaky gut leading to a lot of inflammation. So then you get this cascade of inflammation from the gut, not good feedback from the muscles or or arteries and stuff.

And then you get an autonomic system that isn't getting good feedback and it doesn't get very happy. So then it's, it can be really hard to, you're almost doomed to fall into pots because of the dis, like the autonomic dysregulation with that. So are you seeing more cases of pots and dysautonomia now than you were me even five years ago, right after COVID? Yeah. I've, I'm seeing a lot of dysautonomia in pots now.

Yeah. And I do think like COVID did its number on that. But also just like as the clinic's grown and people are more people are hearing that you can actually help with this. I think that's you get what you get what you ask for kind of thing. So as having, having more people helped and everything, I think we're seeing more and more of that too.

Well, and I, I guess to me, sometimes I feel like these are fake things that we make up, you know, and I don't know, maybe I just, I've been very lucky. I've not been a very sick person. And so, um, are you, especially if you hear it from a kid, you'd be like, ah, you just don't want to go to school. You feel dizzy. I feel dizzy.

Oh, we all feel dizzy. You know, so how do you know as a parent or even for yourself? Because we've been told like it's in your head so much or that you're just anxious. Like we all think we are. We are all anxious.

I feel like anymore. How do you distinguish between what's real, what's a real condition and what might be hard to decide? I mean, it's gotta be hard. Yeah. And that's what the exam is for at the office and the diagnostics, right?

Cause you can't fake that stuff. The, the subjective part, if I'm asking you like, Hey, how are you feeling today? Sure. You can say whatever you want, right? But when you start looking at eye movements, um, balance centers and motor, motor integrity and even like heart rate on a tilt table and those sorts of things, like you can't fake that.

So having like all the data there, you can kind of tell if someone's faking it. I don't like to use the word faking it. Like if it's, if it's something that's more mental, mental related, um, you can decipher a lot of that in an exam. Okay. So this is a real thing that you can do actual diagnostics on and determine if someone has pots.

Okay. So, um, is there anybody that, that you've worked with that, you know, tell me, tell me a little bit about the stories of people who've gone through your four day brain reset program. Tell me what, what have they experienced and what, what has their outcomes been like? Yeah. So one patient that comes to mind right away is, uh, she was having a really hard time walking, um, because of the mechanisms with pots and the feedback in the legs and blood flow and stuff.

Um, we on first day on the tilt table, she could only do five degrees and it was like, skin would get hot, like a major autonomic response with all that. So we had to like work really, really slow up to it. Um, by the third day we were able to go up and down on the tilt table a couple of times. And then on the fourth day we were able to go up and down 10 times. Okay.

And she didn't bring her walker on the last day she had a walker. So it was really cool to see that, but like there was a lot with that case. I liked that example because that case there was a lot of flaring up in the beginning and it was like not the most fun to be treated for and taking, taking care of for. So we did a lot of low level laser therapy, um, muscle stems and just body-based movements, like passive body-based movements to help her get through the program. Because if you would just like bulldoze through that care plan and like just keep activating, it's, it's going to be too much and you'll overwhelm because you're working with a balance with the autonomics again.

Right. So like you have to like strengthen the brain for endurance, but you also need to like keep giving the brain like a rest response in Vegas nerve activities and stuff like that. So in the four day program, she was actually able to ditch her walker on the fourth day. Yeah. It's pretty incredible.

So, um, how do you work alongside, you know, if somebody has seen a cardiologist or a neurologist how do you, do you, do you kind of compliment each other? How do you work with those other providers? We work through a lot of patients will bring their clinical notes with them and just like kind of reading through their notes. And we're always happy to work with a doctor if they want to chat about someone's case. Okay.

Is there anybody who's not a good candidate for the brain reset program that feels that they may have pots and they're just not sure? I would say everyone is a good candidate to do an exam because you just don't know until you do an exam. If you have complex, complex issues going on that you think are pots or like head pressures and dizziness and stuff that makes you a good candidate to at least see what's going on. We're always happy to do just a discovery call to talk it over, do an exam to try that first. Or if you're just like, this is pots, like you can gladly sign up for the four day program as well.

You can get in a little bit faster like with just jumping into the program. But really that's the part of the exam is to kind of determine if you are a good case for that and you just don't know until you examine it. Sure. So you have people coming in from South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, all over the place, Idaho. So why are all of these people flying in to see you?

I think the care is just limited. It's hard to learn this stuff. It's a different type of model with the intensity of care over four days too. It's really common to see, you know, like, okay, we'll see you once a week, once or twice a week for 30 minute sessions for a year. But the nervous system really likes the high intensity therapies.

So just like if you were shooting a basketball, if you for a free throw, you shot one free throw a day for five days, you wouldn't really be that much better at shooting free throws for the season. But if you shot 500 a day for five days, you would be better at shooting free throws for probably the entire season. So because we're reflexive in nature in our nervous system, once you get those reflexes firing, they actually will feed themselves and create a healing response in the body. Okay. So if you feel like you've got pots or this is really resonating with you, what's the first thing that you should do today or this week?

I would schedule an exam at the office. Yeah. If that's something that you're like, Hey, this is me. There's no point in waiting on some of this stuff, especially if you've tried a lot of like diet stuff. I mean, you've really exhausted a lot of options.

Like this is a really great clinic to be at. If you've exhausted a lot of options, because it is such a unique approach. We're not going to tell you the same thing that you've heard and do the same things that you've done. If you are seeing a provider and you want to know if they actually know how to treat pots and treat it effectively, what are some questions you should ask them? Maybe there's somebody in Florida who isn't ready to fly here yet.

What should they ask their provider? I mean, if your doctor is writing it off as anxiety and that it's all in your head and you haven't had like a functional neurology exam or even like functional medicine labs and stuff like that, I would probably run for the hills. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Good to know. What is the... You've got specialties, Dr. Cooper in neurology. Tell me what is the most underrated thing about how our brain heals itself?

The most underrated thing when it comes to the brain healing itself is managing stress. Okay. Being able to take care of yourself and take the time for yourself. And I see it over and over, people put their... Which is good.

I mean, I'm the same way. I'm not immune to this stuff. Putting your kids before yourself. Sure. And it's not like in a selfish standpoint.

But you do need to take care of yourself. One of the best lessons I learned is you can't take care of other people if you're not taking care of yourself. If I'm just sitting there and being sick and feeling how I was, I can't help other people. And so taking care of your stress and making sure it's okay to buy the organic food for yourself. Like, you know, to take care of yourself or take a little bit of time off and go on a vacation and making sure just to check in with yourself with that.

So... What do you think are some of the most common myths when it comes to POTS? What is the number one thing you hear that you have to dispel? That it's just a heart issue or it's just a... You just need more salt and more electrolytes and stuff like that, for sure.

But it's just a chemical imbalance. That's probably the best way to explain it. So people are saying, "POTS is just a chemical imbalance. Take some electrolytes. It'll resolve itself." In my experience, POTS, the chemical imbalance, like the electrolytes and stuff, is something that helps take the heat off the dysfunction in the balance of the autonomics.

So having better, like, electrolyte intake and good protein and stuff, like, it's foundational for that. But the underlying cause is the imbalance in the autonomics, which comes from the brain stem not being activated enough. What if I read you a statement that said, "POTS will go away on its own with enough just electrolytes, sleep, and time?" If that's the underlying cause for that patient, that could be the case. But I will tell you, it's most likely not. But if it's like sleep deprivation and that's the only thing, no history of concussion or major stress or gut issues, that could be the case.

But it's most likely not. You can't supplement your way out of a brain imbalance. If you could change one thing about how the medical system treats POTS patients, what would it be? I would change a perspective shift. What would you tell them?

What would you like to tell the, I would say to start viewing the brain as a functional muscle, like, more, and it's not a muscle, it's a brain. But it's like thinking about it in volume switches versus yeses and nos. There's severities on, like, is this functioning enough? It doesn't have to be broken to create a bunch of symptoms and wreak havoc on your health and your life. I always ask everybody on the show, if you had a billboard and you serve a lot of different states but if you could put one right in the middle of Sioux Falls, what would your billboard say?

Okay, so I actually have a pretty good one. My wife and I came up with a good one. Okay. And so, listen to this with a grain of salt, but we always thought the best tagline for this business would be, "Brain health and chiropractic, it's all in your head." That's pretty good. That's pretty good.

Because that's what all patients are told, that, "Hey, this is all in your head." And it's not all mentally in your head, but it actually is all in your head because it has to do with the wiring in the brain. I love that one. That's great. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. Thanks for talking to us about POTS and dysautonomia, educating us a little bit and showing us some ways that there is hope for many people out there.

Absolutely. So if you have symptoms that are similar to what we've been describing today, make sure to check the show notes. We'll put all the links into how to connect with Dr. Cooper and his office in the YouTube description and make sure to check that and click on that below. Thank you so much.

Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate you being on the show. Thank you. Hey, that's our show.

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