Is a college degree a virus? It must be, if self-assessments about how tired or sleepy someone feels is science.
If your heart rate goes up when you stand or you are just "sick of this nonsense" all of the time, you have a diagnosis - postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS). But you already knew that if you were in a new study because 62 percent of you were in a PoTS support group and so are two of the authors.
Preferred candidates for diagnosis will be:
Ages 30-33
College Educated
Tired a lot
Female
Symptom assessment tools in the total postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS) group compared with the age-matched and sex-matched chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) group. Autonomic symptom burden and scores from Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale are higher in the PoTS group compared with the CFS group while fatigue and daytime sleepiness are comparable.
Is this you? Most doctors have never heard of this so be sure to explain it and send them the link to the article in a journal that someone paid to publish. Only with increased awareness will this make its way into mainstream media and therefore increased diagnoses, like gluten sensitivity did.
Men get too tired to do stuff also but we don't get a disease for it. However, in fairness it seems men win when it comes to medical marijuana. While most pain diagnoses are women, the overwhelming majority of medical marijuana cards are men. So maybe women are just a lot tougher. If so, this PoTS would really knock us on our butts.
Claire McDonald, Sharon Koshi, Lorna Busner, Lesley Kavi, Julia L Newton, 'Postural tachycardia syndrome is associated with significant symptoms and functional impairment predominantly affecting young women: a UK perspective', BMJ Open 2014;4:e004127 doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2013-004127
