so today we're going to talk about low blood pressure and a few related conditions one being
something called pots pot stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome now i know
you know what posture means but what about this term orthostatic it's a term to describe upright
posture so postural orthostatic hypotension is used to describe a condition where you're lying
down and then you stand up and your blood pressure drops but not only does your blood pressure drop
your pulse rate starts going up you feel dizzy disoriented you can lose your sense of vision
you can feel lightheaded fatigue nauseous blurred vision shakiness fainting and you can actually
go unconscious now your normal blood pressure should be 120 over 80. now low blood pressure
or hypotension is defined being the systolic number or the top number being less than 90 and
the bottom or diastolic being less than 60. now i also want to mention when people go into shock
the first thing that happens is their blood pressure drops right down and this could
occur from being overheated over training loss of blood taking certain medications trauma and the
list goes on and on but what i want to focus on in this video is mainly the mechanism of what occurs
when you stand up and your blood pressure drops what's behind this and what can you do about it
so what are the possibilities well number one it could be that you just don't have enough blood
in your body and that can come from various things internal bleeding another possibility could be
that you're anemic that could be from low iron another common reason for not enough volume of
blood in your body is you're dehydrated because you don't have enough salt salt helps you retain
fluid and this can show up a couple ways number one just not consuming enough salt number two
drinking excessive amount of water without the salt can severely dehydrate you because all this
water is going to dilute the last bit of sodium you have and severely dehydrate you and so you can
be dehydrated by consuming too much water without the salt the salt is there to help you retain
the fluid one interesting point about this is when someone starts the ketogenic diet they lose a lot
of fluid because they're no longer retaining fluid and so people when they start the ketogenic diet
should actually consume a little more salt now if you are taking diuretics if you have vomiting if
you have dehydration those could be other reasons why you don't have enough fluid in your body and
that can show up as low blood pressure all right so there's something else i want to talk about
and that relates to something called the autonomic nervous system if your autonomic
nervous system is not working right if it's dysfunctional that could be the reason why your
blood pressure drops when you stand up because the autonomic nervous system has everything to do with
adapting your body to stress especially postural stresses so let's say for example
this is your body and you have your blood right and you lay down so when you stand up your your
blood is going to pull to the bottom of your body and your legs right well what's going to happen
to your head up here if you don't have enough blood and oxygen is you're going to pass out so
the autonomic nervous system helps push or squeeze the blood up into your brain that's what it does
so the autonomic nervous system is mainly located in the lower part of your brain called the brain
stem and your brain stem is very sensitive to a b1 deficiency why because you need b1 to handle
the massive oxygen that the brain requires to do its function b1 is like the spark plug in
a carburetor where you're mixing oxygen and fuel without the b1 you won't get that combustion and
you won't be able to use the fuel in your brain so without b1 the brain doesn't work that well and
the autonomic nervous system does not work that well in fact even when you're deficient slightly
in b1 you can have very similar symptoms to pots for example your pulse rate goes up you can have
arrhythmias you get dizzy when you stand up now the way that someone becomes deficient in b1
is mainly through consuming refined carbohydrates and sugars they can also get it by consuming too
many sulfites in red wine and also dried fruit also malabsorption so if you have a gut problem
it could be that you're just not able to absorb vitamin b1 and then also when you start the
ketogenic diet the requirement for b1 goes way up and if you're deficient you're going to have
symptoms especially keto fatigue and also the more stress you have the more b1 you're going to need
the other key nutrient for the autonomic nervous system is vitamin d without vitamin
d your autonomic nervous system is just not going to work that well so if you have pots if
you have low blood pressure three things that i would focus on is more salt more b1 through
nutritional yeast in more vitamin d3 hey before you go if you're benefiting from any of my content
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