I know what you’re thinking. Why is a chiropractor writing about cookware and cute black and white bears? POTS, PANS, and PANDAS are conditions related to the autonomic and immune systems of the body.
POTS – Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome:
This means when someone stands up, their heart has to beat faster because blood pools in their legs. There is a disconnect somewhere between the nerves in the legs and the brain. Normally, when a person stands, the nervous system knows to tighten the blood vessels in the legs to compensate for the pull of gravity on the blood so it doesn’t all pool in the legs and feet. The nerves that control blood vessels and blood pressure are called autonomic nerves. Hence, this condition is a form of dysautonomia, or dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system.
PANS – Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome:
This is when certain neuropsychiatric conditions began quickly for no obvious reason. PANDAS is Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Strep. PANDAS looks similar to PANS, except a strep infection can be pointed to as a cause whereas PANS may have some sort of other infection as a cause. Common neuropsychiatric symptoms with these disorders include anxiety, sensory processing challenges, behavioral issues, mood disorders, tics, and many other possibilities.
The 3 P’s:
These three conditions are often seen next to each other, even though the latter two seem quite different from POTS. What is the commonality? As I mentioned above, POTS is a form of dysautonomia. PANS and PANDAS however, are not considered dysautonomia in the medical community. This seems like a miscalculation in my view as a neurologically-focused chiropractor. PANDAS has “autoimmune” right in the name. The immune system is controlled by the autonomic nervous system. The autonomic nervous system controls everything in the body that we don’t have voluntary control over. This includes heartbeat, breathing, digestion, metabolism, immune system, and many other things.
When we focus on optimizing the nervous system, everything downstream is able to heal and improve. At Ideal Family Chiropractic, we scan the nervous system using neurological INSiGHT scans to find where there may be issues. With that additional guidance, we can target specific areas to get the desired improvements. These targeted, specific adjustments will remove the interference, stress, and distortion from the neuro-communication process, which will remove you from survival/ protection/ fight-or-flight mode.
You cannot be in healing mode while you are in survival mode. As the autonomic nervous system is brought out of a stressed state, it is better able to rebuild and rewire the necessary connections for proper autonomic function. This leads to improvements with POTS, PANS, and PANDAS since these all fall under the umbrella of the autonomic nervous system.