Diagnosis

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POTS is often undiagnosed because many doctors are unfamiliar with this condition. Doctors commonly diagnose it as chronic fatigue or post viral syndrome (when your body has gotten rid of a virus but some symptoms haven’t gone away yet). The treatment for this particular diagnosis is to “wait it out” and “rest”, but this just makes POTS worse. POTS needs to be treated partially with exercise, so lying down in your bed or on the couch doesn’t help. There is a specific test that diagnoses POTS: the tilt table test. The tilt table test takes your heart rate and blood pressure lying down and standing straight up on a tilt table. If your pulse increases more than 40 beats per minute and blood pressure decreases when changing from lying down to standing still for a few minutes, then you have POTS.  The tilt table is more reliable than exam room testing of vital signs.