Educational articles about neurological conditions and what actually works

Written by our team to help you understand complex neurological conditions and our diagnostic approach.

POTS: Description vs Explanation
POTS & Dysautonomia Testing & Diagnosis Brain Blood Flow
POTS

POTS Hydration: How Much Salt and Water Actually Helps

How much salt and water actually helps POTS, where the 2 to 3 liter advice stops working, and the signs your real problem is blood distribution.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
POTS

What Causes the High Heart Rate in POTS?

What causes the high heart rate in POTS? The heart speeds up to rescue blood flow to your brain. Why it happens, what beta blockers reveal and what to measure.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Dysautonomia Physical Exam: The Bedside Neurological Tests

The bedside neurological exam our team pairs with autonomic testing: pulses, reflexes, eye movements, and what each reveals about POTS and dysautonomia.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
POTS

POTS Fluid Dumping: Why Salt and Water Aren't Enough

For most people with POTS, low blood volume is not the core problem. Here is why salt and water hit a ceiling, and what fluid dumping really means.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
POTS

Can POTS Be Cured? What the Research and Our Clinical Experience Actually Show

Can POTS be cured? Many recover significantly or fully. 'Cure' means recalibrating a nervous system that lost its precision, and research shows it can.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
POTS

POTS Treatment Without Medication: Why Drugs Suppress the Compensation Your Brain Needs

POTS medications manage the compensation. Neurological rehab targets the regulation failure. Understand where each approach works and where it falls short.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
POTS

Why POTS Wrecks Your Digestion (And Why GI Doctors Can't Find the Problem)

Why POTS and dysautonomia cause nausea, bloating, and gastroparesis. The gut isn't broken; the brain's control of it is. The autonomic-GI connection.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Hypocapnic Cerebral Hypoperfusion: The POTS Mechanism Nobody Is Talking About

Hypocapnic cerebral hypoperfusion (HYCH) is a drop in brain blood flow caused by low CO2.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Orthostatic Cerebral Hypoperfusion Syndrome: When Your Brain Loses Blood Flow but Every Test Looks Normal

Orthostatic cerebral hypoperfusion syndrome (OCHOS) is a measurable drop in brain blood flow on standing. Learn how it differs from standard POTS.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
POTS

How Functional Neurology Fits POTS Care

POTS is a brain regulation problem, not a heart rate problem. Mechanism-based neurological evaluation identifies what's actually driving symptoms.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
POTS

Intensive POTS Treatment Programs

What intensive POTS treatment involves: cerebral blood flow testing, vestibular rehab, and neurological rehabilitation. What to expect in 4 to 7 days.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Your Tests Came Back Normal. You're Clearly Not.

Free guide: the 4 mechanisms your doctors aren't testing for, and how to find which one is keeping you sick. From The Keiser Clinic.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Ear Fullness and Popping in POTS: The Drainage Problem Behind It

Ear fullness, popping, or a heartbeat in your ear with POTS? It often traces to how blood drains from your head, not just your eustachian tubes.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Vestibular

Dizzy in Elevators? What It Reveals About Your Vestibular System

Feeling dizzy in an elevator isn't random. It's a small test of how your brain blends vision, inner ear, and body sense to keep you balanced.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Derealization and POTS: Why You Feel Detached From Reality

Feeling detached from reality with POTS or dysautonomia? Derealization is often a blood-flow and vestibular signal, not just anxiety. What it means.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

POTS Symptoms: Why They Don't Match Your Autonomic Test Results

A 2024 study of 2,627 patients found POTS and dysautonomia symptom surveys don't match objective autonomic testing. Here's what that gap really means.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

POTS vs OCHOS: Why the 30 BPM Line Doesn't Mean What You Think

POTS and OCHOS share one core problem: reduced cerebral blood flow. The 30 BPM threshold dividing them is a 40-year-old artifact, not a biological boundary.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Vestibular

When Gravity Feels Wrong, Everything Feels Overwhelming

A 3-degree error in gravity perception made everything feel overwhelming. How the vestibular system shapes anxiety, brain fog, and sensory overload.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Vestibular

Why Vestibular Dysfunction Causes Anxiety, Brain Fog, and Depression

Vestibular dysfunction doesn't just cause dizziness. When the brain's spatial reference breaks down, it drives anxiety, brain fog, depression, and fatigue.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Peripheral Nerve Stimulation for Dysautonomia: Train the Brain Without Crashing

Peripheral nerve stimulation lets dysautonomia patients train the brain without crashing. How PNS restores proprioception and cerebral blood flow.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
POTS

The Three Types of POTS

POTS isn't one thing. Understanding the three subtypes, neuropathic, hyperadrenergic, and hypovolemic, is the first step toward treatment that works.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

POTS Without the T: When You Have Every Symptom But Don't Qualify

If your blood pressure looks normal and your heart rate doesn't quite qualify, you've been told nothing is wrong. Here's what the standard test misses.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Why So Many Dysautonomia Patients Are Misdiagnosed and Mistreated

A POTS diagnosis can be a relief, but for many the treatments still don't work. Here's why, and what understanding your specific mechanism changes.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Carbon Dioxide: One of the Most Important Metrics for Brain Blood Flow

CO2 isn't a waste product. It's a key signal your brain uses to regulate blood flow. Why we measure ETCO2 on the tilt table, and what low CO2 feels like.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Transcranial Doppler (TCD) Test: What It Shows in POTS

A transcranial Doppler tracks how fast blood moves to your brain as you're tilted upright, and shows whether it drops in POTS and by how much.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

What Part of the Brain Controls Eye Movements?

Eye movements run on brainstem, cerebellar and frontal circuits. See what the cerebellum adds and what slower pursuit looked like in one concussion study.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Concussion

Post-Concussion Syndrome Treatment: What Helps When Symptoms Last

Concussion symptoms that won't fade? What post-concussion treatment targets, where rest fits, how activity returns and what the research shows.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Vestibular

5 Types of Vestibular Dysfunction: Symptoms and Treatment

Peripheral, central, cerebellar, neck-related and hypersensitive: how our team sorts vestibular dysfunction, what each feels like and how it's treated.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Autonomic Testing for POTS: What Each Test Measures

Autonomic testing for POTS checks heart rate, blood pressure and sweat nerve reflexes. Learn what each test measures, what results mean and what they miss.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Migraine

Migraine as a Neurological Event: A Different Approach

Migraine is a neurological event, and the headache is only one part of it. Treating migraine as a brain problem instead of a pain problem opens new treatment pathways.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

Neck Problems and the Brain: 7 Ways Your Neck Drives Brain Fog, Dizziness and POTS

Neck problems can cause brain fog, memory trouble, dizziness and POTS symptoms. See the 7 ways cervical joint errors reach the brain and how they're tested.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Small Fiber Neuropathy and POTS: How SFN Drives Dysautonomia

Small fiber neuropathy shows up in a quarter to half of POTS patients tested. How SFN drives dysautonomia, why a skin biopsy can miss it, and what improves it.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

Brain Fog Causes: Why It Gets Worse When You Stand or Drive

What causes brain fog, why it can get worse when you stand or drive, and how to find which link in your brain's supply chain is weak.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

POTS Exercise Intolerance: Symptoms, Causes and What Helps

Why exercise feels so hard with POTS: the symptoms, what research shows about the heart and fitness, what our team finds in the brain, and what helps.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

Can Tight Neck Muscles Restrict Blood Flow to the Brain?

Tight muscles, posture and the bones of your neck can squeeze the arteries to your brain. What research shows, who gets symptoms, and how our team tests it.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Is IV Saline the Cure for ME/CFS and Dysautonomia?

IV saline helps ME/CFS and dysautonomia patients feel better temporarily. But if the problem is blood flow distribution, saline is a patch, not a fix.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

How to Actually Diagnose Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

ME/CFS isn't just fatigue. How chronic fatigue syndrome is properly diagnosed, what testing reveals about the brain, and why finding the mechanism matters.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

How to Reverse PEM for Good (ME/CFS Recovery)

PEM recovery explained: what a PEM crash is, how long it lasts, why it often hits a day or more later, and how our team works to widen what you can do.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

FND and POTS: How They're Linked and How to Tell Them Apart

FND and POTS can show up together. What FND is, how it differs from POTS, why standing can make FND symptoms worse, and what a tilt test can show.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

Cerebral Hypoperfusion: Why Your Brain Isn't Getting Enough Blood

Cerebral hypoperfusion means too little blood reaching the brain. What hypoperfusion is, symptoms, causes, why normal blood pressure misses it, and tests.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Why Most Dysautonomia Treatments Don't Work

Why do so many dysautonomia treatments fail? Both conventional and functional medicine miss the one core problem: the brain is the common thread.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Can Vitamin Toxicity Be Causing Your POTS?

Can B6 toxicity cause POTS? Learn about vitamin B6 and autonomic nerves, how to start moving again with POTS, and hypoplastic vertebral arteries.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

POTS: When Your Brain Loses Its Balance

POTS isn't just about heart rate. Learn why it's really a brain coordination problem, and why treating it as a heart condition misses the mechanism.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Blood Pooling in Your Legs, Hands and Feet: What Causes It

Blood pooling is blood collecting in your legs, feet or hands when you're upright. What it looks like, when it's normal, and what causes it in POTS.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
POTS

Why Does My Heart Race When I Stand Up?

Your heart races when you stand because your brain is losing blood flow, a measurable regulation failure, not anxiety. Here's what's actually happening.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

POTS vs Deconditioning: Can Deconditioning Cause POTS?

Does deconditioning cause POTS, or POTS cause deconditioning? What bed rest does to the heart, POTS vs being out of shape, and what exercise can and can't do.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Sleep, Neuroplasticity, and POTS: Why Your Brain Needs Sleep to Heal

Sleep is actively restorative. Learn why sleep is the engine of neuroplasticity and recovery in dysautonomia and POTS.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

Proof That the Brain Controls the Autonomic System

Proof that the brain controls the autonomic system, using eye movements, cerebral blood flow data, and real patient outcomes from targeted brain rehab.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Case Study

Case Study: POTS and Digestion Problems Solved Together

A 21-year-old with POTS and gastroparesis improved digestion, heart rate, and sensation through neural rehab, without any GI-specific treatment.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Case Study

Case Study: 2 Years of POTS Resolved in One Month

A patient with two years of POTS recovered in one month through targeted neural rehab: cerebral blood flow testing, tilt progression, and retinal slip.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Case Study

EDS and POTS: Back to Life in Less Than a Month

Case study: A college-aged EDS and POTS patient went from missing school and extreme fatigue to getting back to life in under a month.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Case Study

POTS Treatment Case Study: From Housebound to Coaching Again

POTS case study: A 21-year-old athlete went from housebound to coaching baseball and taking classes again. Neuropathy findings and CO2-guided rehab.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Hyperadrenergic POTS: Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

Hyperadrenergic POTS (hyperPOTS) is POTS with a norepinephrine surge on standing. See the symptoms, how it's tested, what beta blockers miss and what to check.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Case Study

Diagnosed With POTS, But That Wasn't the Problem

A 15-year-old diagnosed with POTS wasn't actually a POTS case. See the real diagnosis, brain-based treatment, and full recovery including return to school.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Concussion

Solving Post-Concussion Symptoms That Wouldn't Go Away

Post-concussion case study: dizziness, heart rate spikes, nausea, and broken sleep. See the eye findings, treatment steps, and outcome.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Case Study

Are People With POTS Permanently in a Wheelchair? An 8-Year Case

No study we found counts how many people with POTS stay in a wheelchair. See one 8-year case: what our team found, what we did and what changed.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

SSRIs and POTS: Do They Help or Make It Worse?

Do SSRIs help POTS? What the one randomized SSRI trial found, why SNRIs and ADHD drugs can raise standing heart rate, and how to talk with your prescriber.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

POTS vs Anxiety: How to Tell Which Is Causing Your Symptoms

POTS or anxiety? How to tell which comes first, why POTS is so often misdiagnosed as anxiety, what testing shows, and a case where the body led.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

What Doctors Are Missing in POTS Cases

Why so many POTS cases get dismissed, why clean labs don't mean you're fine, and how a brain-first approach finds what standard workups miss.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

How to Know If Your POTS Is Actually Improving

How to know if your POTS is actually improving using cerebral blood flow data, not just symptoms. A case study shows why BP meds may worsen perfusion.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Orthostatic Intolerance: Symptoms, Types and What Causes It

Orthostatic intolerance means symptoms when you stand that ease when you lie down. Symptoms, causes, and the types: orthostatic hypotension, POTS and OCHOS.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Case Study

POTS Recovery After 2 Weeks of Treatment

A 27-year-old with brain fog and POTS after a concussion recovered cerebral blood flow and resolved heart rate instability in two weeks.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

What Is Functional Neurology, and Is It Legitimate?

Functional neurology measures a function, gives a targeted input and retests. How it differs from neurology, its training and what the evidence shows.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

Your Brain's Secret Blood Flow Control System

Your brain has its own blood flow control system. Learn why that matters for POTS and why normal blood pressure doesn't guarantee normal brain blood flow.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Tilt Table Test for POTS: How Long It Takes, Nitroglycerin and Results

What happens on a tilt table test for POTS, how long it takes, why some labs give nitroglycerin, what the results mean and whether you need one at all.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

MCAS and Dysautonomia: How Mast Cells and POTS Connect

How MCAS and dysautonomia connect: what histamine does to blood flow and heart rate in POTS, how to tell the 2 apart, and what helps when both flare.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Recalibrate, Don't Just Manage

POTS and dysautonomia treatment should recalibrate your nervous system, not just manage symptoms. Targeting the lynchpin unlocks recovery.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

Why Your Diagnosis Label Might Be Holding You Back

CFS, POTS, and ME/CFS syndrome labels describe symptoms, not causes. Moving from syndrome to mechanism is the key to effective treatment.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

The Autonomic System Isn't a Switch (And Why That Matters)

The autonomic nervous system isn't an on/off switch. Learn why 'sympathetic dominance' is misleading and how specific pathways drive POTS symptoms.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

The “Little Brain” That May Be Causing Your Dysautonomia

Cerebellar dysfunction causes dysautonomia and POTS. Learn how the cerebellum regulates autonomic reflexes and how eye movement testing reveals it.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

The Vagus Nerve Isn’t What You Think

Vagus nerve stimulation for POTS misses the point. The vagus is mostly sensory, paired antagonism is a myth, and the real driver of dysautonomia differs.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

Why Standard Exercise Advice Fails POTS Patients

Exercise advice fails POTS patients because it ignores orthostatic blood flow. Deconditioning isn't the cause. Fix cerebral perfusion first.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Vestibular

Why You Feel Better In The Car (And Worse When It Stops)

Mal de Debarquement Syndrome (MdDS) explains why you feel better in a moving car and worse when it stops. Learn about the sensory mismatch driving it.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Neurology

Your Neck Might Be Part of the Problem

Neck stiffness with dysautonomia isn't random. Learn the neurological connection between your neck, vestibular system, and autonomic symptoms.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Dysautonomia

You're Not Lazy: Your Brain Is Running on Empty

POTS fatigue and brain fog aren't laziness. Dr. Keiser explains why reduced cerebral blood flow starves your brain of fuel and what testing can reveal.

Dr. Nathan Keiser
Concussion

What Happens When a Concussion Doesn't Heal

Post-concussion symptoms that persist often involve disrupted cerebral blood flow and cerebellar dysfunction. Learn the brain mechanisms behind it.

Dr. Nathan Keiser

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