POTS and PVCs Traced to the Neck: A 3D Patient Case
Hannah is a college student. She gets lightheaded and badly short of breath, and her heart skips beats, which doctors call PVCs. She'd already worked on her diet and her body chemistry, and nothing touched it.
What Hannah was told: POTS and PVCs
Hannah walks away with 2 labels, POTS and PVCs. Both describe what her heart is doing, and neither one explains why.
What we found
Standing drops blood flow to one side of her brain, and her neck is part of the reason. Head turns cut her blood flow and set off her skipped beats.
Her neck is cutting into her brain's blood supply
When Hannah stands, the right side of her brain loses more than half its blood flow in the first minute, and her heart races to make up for it. Her neck plays a big part. Turning or tipping her head drops blood flow on one side and sets off her skipped beats, and her eyes showed a jumpy movement driven by her neck. So she needs 2 things: a neck that can hold and move her head without pinching off flow, and a brain that knows where her head is.
How we got Hannah better (10 days in the clinic, then a home program)
Hannah's plan went straight at her neck, and at how her brain reads the position of her head. She had 10 days.
- Neck stability and control (10 days of hard work). First, neck stability and control. She practices holding and turning her head with control, so a head turn stops cutting off her blood flow.
- Posture (The structure under her neck). Second, her posture. The structure underneath her neck has to hold her head where it belongs.
- Vestibular integration (Her brain's sense of where her head is). Third, vestibular integration. Her neck was also throwing off her eyes, so we worked on how her brain recognizes where her head is.
- Home program (Every day, on her own). Then the program goes home with her, and keeping it up every day is up to her.
Hannah, 10 days later
- All 10 minutes upright, up from 8
- Brain blood flow in the 90s and 100s, with no early drop
- Heart rate spike about 20 beats lower
- Every neck test clean
At 10 days, Hannah was on the right track, and her treatment came home with her. We built her a home program so she could keep making progress on her own. Getting better takes time, and she spent her summer out enjoying herself.
Watch the case video
