Woman Says She’s ‘Allergic To Gravity,’ What Is Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, POTS?

You may have heard the various media reports of a 28-year-old woman saying that she’s “allergic to gravity.” Now, being “allergic to gravity” may sound like breaking out in hives whenever gravity is around or what Michael Jordan had when he flew towards the basket in the 1980s and 1990s. But in this case, as described in an article by Simona Kitanovska for Zenger News published in Newsweek, Lyndsi Johnson, 28, used the phrase to describe her struggle with POTS. And here POTS doesn’t mean a bunch of cookware. Rather, it stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. When you have POTS, it can lead to literally a standing problem in that you can feel sick and even pass out whenever you stand for more than a few minutes. This clearly can be a debilitating condition because standing is typically something that you do a lot in life.

In this video from SWNS, Johnson described just how debilitating POTS has been for her:

Kitanovska’s article quoted Johnson as saying, “I’m allergic to gravity–it sounds crazy but it’s true. I can’t stand up for longer than three minutes without feeling faint, being sick or passing out.” It also quoted Johnson as describing the condition leaving her “in bed all day–for up to 23 hours a day.”

Technically, POTS is not an allergy, per se. It has nothing to do with your immune system responding or reacting to gravity. Quite the opposite. It’s about your body not being able to fully react to gravity as it normally does. It’s when your cardiovascular system can’t maintain enough blood flow to your head when you change your body position. And getting blood to your head is important for two reasons. First, it’s your head, which ranks fairly high on your list of important body parts. Secondly, red blood cells are what carry oxygen to cells throughout your body. Without enough oxygen, cells like those in your brain can’t fully function.

Normally, your cardiovascular system is able to keep blood flowing to all parts of your body, regardless of how you may change the position of your body. That’s why you don’t see people passing out left and right in gymnastics competitions or Dancing with the Stars episodes whenever they turn upside down or fling their heads to the side. It does this through a complex system of nerve fibers that send signals to your blood vessels to contract and your heart to beat at appropriate rates.

However, when you have POTS and stand up, the blood remains in the lower part of your body because of, you know, gravity. Without enough blood in your head, you can start feeling dizzy, lightheaded, and about to faint. The lack of blood can prompt your brain to tell your heart, “hey, heart, not enough oxygen up here. What’s the deal? Start beating faster to get us more blood.” As a result, your heart rate can increase by 30 beats per minute or more, while your blood pressure decreases. This increased heart rate may not be enough to compensate though.

Different things can lead to POTS such as damage to the nerves that help control your blood flow, higher levels of a stress hormone called norepinephrine, or very low blood levels. However, often the cause of POTS is unknown.

Diagnosing POTS ain’t always easy either. POTS can be mistaken for all sorts of things. When you tell people that you can’t stand up or have to lay in bed for long periods of time, people can be quite, surprise, surprise, judgy. They can come to a lot of premature and incorrect conclusions about you.

Since the symptoms of POTS can be literally and figuratively disorienting, it can take a while to properly diagnose the condition. Typically, doctors will use a tilt-table test to determine whether you have POTS. This entails you lying flat on a table and then being strapped to it. This wouldn’t be a normal table like a dining table but one that can be tilted slowly upwards to simulate your moving to a standing upright position. In the meantime, the doctor can monitor your heart rate and check for symptoms such as feeling faint.

A big part of diagnosing POTS is to rule out other possible causes. So doctors may check other things such as an EKG, a heart monitor, or an echocardiogram to measure how your heart is functioning. They also may use blood and urine tests to check what’s going on with your kidneys, liver, and thyroid gland.

Unfortunately, there’s no cure for POTS. So it’s all about managing symptoms as much as possible. Medications like fludrocortisone, midodrine, phenylephrine, and beta-blockers may help increase blood flow throughout your body. Wearing compression stockings on your lower extremities all the way up to your thighs or even your waist may help squeeze blood from your legs upwards in your body, sort of like squeezing toothpaste. Consuming salty foods and water can keep the volume of your blood higher. Exercise can help increase blood flow, although maintaining physical activity can be tough with POTS. Proper education and awareness of the condition and its symptoms is important not only for those suffering from POTS but also for those around the person.

Recently, 14-year-old, Gabby Rushing, who was diagnosed with POTS in 2021, wanted to raise awareness about the condition by pursuing a world record. This CBS11 KTHV news segment showed how Rushing successfully broke a world record by holding a deep squat position for two hours:

As the news segment related, there has been a rise in POTS diagnoses among those who have had Covid-19. This has raised questions about whether POTS is yet another possible long Covid condition.

So having POTS is not exactly being “allergic to gravity.” It’s not something that a little Zyrtec or Claritin can handle. It’s not as if your immune system and body are reacting to gravity. Instead, it does result from your cardiovascular system not being able to counteract the effects of gravity on the blood in your body. And dealing with this can be very, very tough. After all, assuming that you are on Earth, gravity is kind of always around.