Would you mind posting or linking the article? Immediately following covid I had a brief burst of energy but its been zero since. Minor chores, I just can’t get up and do them. I’ve been wondering if it’s related.

Sorry, I meant to do that.

Covid Long-Haulers Illuminate Overlooked Medical Condition

And here's the one from the Cleveland Clinic:

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

I had Covid in late January- early February and I've been having a lot of problems since. I thought it might be POTS, but after Googling it and reading the symptoms, I'm not sure. I'm just so tired/ lacking energy all the time and feel like I'm short of breath when standing and walking. I also have a headache everyday along with feeling like I have a sinus infection. I just finished another round of antibiotics, but nothing helps.

My son was recently diagnosed with possible POTS, but it's not Covid related. Still, he's having a heck of a time with low energy and tiredness. It seems that the only treatment is exercise??

This is just a suggestion but see if your doctor will order a chest x-ray if they have not already. With so many people being asymptomatic there may be traces of the disease such as scars that could now show up. Exercise can stretch those scars so if the only treatment is exercise it could be a clue that they are there. The reason that they might show up now is similar to broken bones showing up only after healing starts.

I hope a timely and correct assessment can be made to get you on the road to feeling better ASAP. Don't go too overboard with being a self-diagnostician, that can be a reaction to not having confidence in the docs you see. Find better ones if need be and best wishes, of course.

(I'm not a fan nor a user of acronyms, I understand many have the opposite view. Just for a chuckle, when I saw the heading, I thought you were talking about your telephone because POTS is the telecom acronym for Plain Old Telephone Service. IE, wired service from the phone company, running down a wire from a telephone pole or underground where utilities are buried )

It seems that the only treatment is exercise??

I hope not, since exercise intolerance is one of the symptoms. I feel as though someone pulled the plug on my energy. I'm not unfamiliar with this feeling, as it happens periodically with Lyme and babesiosis, as well as fibromyalgia, and I've been good at pacing myself for a long time. But now it's like, pull a few weeds and then spend the rest of the afternoon recovering. And don't schedule anything for the next day.

Check out Dr. Stephen Cabral. POTS is one of the many problems he has suffered from and overcome. He may have information that could he helpful to you.

May be helpful for your doc to bring a diary including date, time, what you were doing, specific symptoms, and duration of symptoms. If you have a pulse oximeter, adding heart rate and oxygen saturation is good.

Good luck with diagnosis and treatment.

"Check out Dr. Stephen Cabral."

Do you know he's not a medical doctor and not a osteopathic doctor. His website says his doctorate is a

Doctorate of Functional Medicine Practitionery

Anyone ever hear of that? I think the more common term to describe his approach may start with the letter "Q" and sound like the noise ducks make.

Be sure to mention your leak as well Hidden mold could have been growing for a while That can cause all sorts of issues

from Johns Hopkins .. very abbreviated. the tilt table is standard test for POTS ( sorry Elmer, it‘s just too long) It can be debilitating. Proper meds can be a huge help, if not an outright fix.

• POTS is a common condition affecting an estimated one to three million Americans.

• The symptoms of POTS include but are not limited to lightheadedness (occasionally with fainting), difficulty thinking and concentrating (brain fog), fatigue, intolerance of exercise, headache, blurry vision, palpitations, tremor and nausea.

• Researchers don’t fully understand the causes of POTS, but it is more common in women than men and is more likely to develop in adolescents and young adults.

• POTS is diagnosed using either a 10-minute standing test or a head-up tilt table test; occasionally other tests are performed to identify specific characteristics of POTS present in some patients.

• Most people’s POTS symptoms respond to a combination of diet, medications, physical therapy and other treatments.

"Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome is a condition where an unusually significant increase in heart rate accompanies the action of an individual going from lying to standing."

"Current adult diagnostic criterion requires a heart rate increase of greater than or equal to 30 bpm within the initial 10 minutes of standing or head-up tilt (HUT) in the ABSENCE of orthostatic hypotension."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541074/#NBK541074_pubdet

Important to NOT confuse PoTS with orthostatic hypotension which may also cause tachycardia, and is VERY common in older patients, due to many different causes including medications.

POTS can be very debilitating. Some have troubles standing in line at a store, others can have difficulty standing up to walk across a room. The poor mans tilt table test is an easy way to have it diagnosed in the Drs office. The HR is taken while lying, then every few min while standing, as long as the patient is able to tolerate, or until the HR increases by 30 beats per min, whichever comes first.

POTS is often treated with exercise, but is also a common occurrence amongst people with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis). The cardinal symptom of ME is that exercise makes those patients worse. In those patients, a lot of them have success treating POTS with betablockers.

I notice a few people have mentioned low energy. One thing you might want to consider is whether or not you are experiencing PEM (post exertional malaise) or PENE (post exertional neuroimmune exhaustion). If you exert yourself, are you worse 24-48 hours later? If that is the case, you should be considering aggressive rest rather than trying to exercise your way out of it.

It is counterintuitive, but there is considerable research being done by places like the Workwell Foundation and the Open Medicine Foundation related to ME and post viral illness.

@Alisande I have ME as a result of a viral infection, and when I first became sick, I tried to make myself better with pool aerobics. It actually made me worse. I went to Calif and was tested by Workwell. When I exercise my O2 drops, my temp drops, my resps go down, everything is backwards from normal. When I exercise 2 days in a row, my capacity goes right down. I have learned to be a super duper couch potato and that keeps me healthier.

I do notice my POTS is considerably better since I started a beta blocker. Certainly not normal, but better.

Marigold, I'm glad you're doing well and are well informed. I enjoy maintaining my no-prescriptions status, but I'm thinking a beta blocker might help my Raynaud's, the blight of my winters and also related to my autonomic nervous system, I think.