Dysautonomia - Symptoms And Treatment

The definition of Dysautonomia is a malfunction (or imbalance) of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) or the automatic nervous system that controls a person's involuntary bodily functions. An example is one's heart rate accelerating or decelerating. Another is digestion, either too fast or too slow.

A body's complete nervous system is divided into two parts, one for involuntary actions called the sympathic nervous system and another for involuntary actions called the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathic system deals with an organ's function accelerating, whereas the parasympathetic system involves decelerating.

These two parts of a body's nervous system continually work to make your body function to the stimuli around you. If a train's whistle startles you, your sympathetic nerves kick in, and you might jump or shout. As you relax at home or on a beach, your parasympathetic nerves will quiet your body to a peaceful lull. And there's every speed in between working through our bodies daily. A person's nutrition and hormone balance are also factors in keeping the delicate balance of the ANS.

When a baby is being forming in its mother's womb, the autonomic nervous system and the heart's mitral valve are developed at the same time. Therefore, some times if a person has a deviation with the mitral valve, he/she also has a variation in the ANS balance.

Not only are mitral valve prolapse patients prone to dysautonomia but also are those with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), vasovagal or neurocardiogenic syncope, chronic fatigue syndrome, Shy-Drager syndrome, panic attacks, anxiety, in appropriate sinus tachycardia (IST), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), fibromyalgia, and a number of other disorders.

With Dysautonomia, a person may become dizzy, lose her balance, faint, and experience various aches and pains. Other symptoms include fatigue to exhaustion, various chest pains, headaches, severe panic or anxiety attacks, tachycardia, hypotension, poor exercise tolerance, dizziness, sleep disorders, tinnitus, gastrointestinal symptoms (IBS), sweating, blurred vision, numbness and tingling, and depression.

Other secondary symptoms of MVPS/D include hot/cold sensations, heat/sun intolerance, shakiness, swelling in limbs, shortness of breath, excessive perspiration or inability to perspire, fibrocystic breast disorder, rashes, difficulty concentrating or poor memory, heightened sensitivity to smell or sound, temporomandibular joint dysfunction (TMJ), scoliosis, low body temperature, endometriosis, muscle aches, allergies, and excessive gas.

A patient does not have to have ALL symptoms for dysautonomia.

A doctor can determine a medication to help with the dysautonomia. And these might have to be changed over time.

Diabetes and coronary heart disease damage tiny nerves and cause inappropriate responses of the ANS. This dysautonomia is not one associated with MVPS dysautonomia.