POTS & Dysautonomia
Welcome to a clinic dedicated to rehabilitating the brain areas responsible for your POTS/ Dysautonomia/Orthostatic Intolerance Symptoms. Whether you've been formally diagnosed or if you've stumbled upon a Facebook group for POTS, our clinic strives to uncover where your POTS symptoms are coming from and how we can fix the problem.
The conventional medical model diagnoses POTS either by a sustained 30pt HR spike or through a tilt table test that assesses abnormalities in blood pressure or heart rate. Though this may give you an appropriate diagnosis, the real question is what happens next? How is this fixed? And what happens if your test results fall slightly out of the margins for POTS?
That's where Dr Hannah comes in. Through different diagnostic tests, we aim to determine which areas of the brain are not properly regulating blood flow, and thus uncovering the culprit behind your symptoms. POTS/ Dysuatonomia is more than just a cardiac problem. The piece of the puzzle missing is how the brain innervates the heart through the autonomic nervous system.
If you are struggling with dizziness, lightheadedness, heart palpitations/chest pain, brain fog, fatigue, tunnel vision, nausea, heat intolerance, balance problems, and more...If you have trouble walking up a flight of stairs or getting out of a hot shower...If you can no longer work out without feeling sick afterward... If you've been wearing compression socks and chugging electrolytes but are still fatigued and dizzy....
POTS & Dysautonomia
This clinic is where you can get your life back and return to the things you love to do.
After reviewing your medical history and symptoms, Dr Hannah will conduct blood pressure testing, a balance assessment, an occluded vision test, and a standard neuro exam to determine which brain structures may not be properly regulating blood flow.
Dr Hannah will then determine, based on your subjective complaint and objective findings, if an in-office treatment plan is right for you, or if there is another profession that could serve you best
If an in-house treatment plan is recommended, then the assumption is that Dr Hannah can help make permanent changes in your symptoms, not just a temporary fix.
Want to learn more? The next step is performing a free 15 min phone consult to see if we are the right fit for you
Post Concussion Syndrome
What we know about concussions has drastically changed in the past decade. 15 years ago, providers merely suggested resting in a dark room for a week to recover from a concussion. However, what we know now is that rest and darkness alone are insufficient ways to recover from a concussion. Instead, post-concussion syndrome requires a more intensive neurorehab program. Concussions can be classified as a diffuse axonal injury. This is a fancy way of saying that when there is a hit to the head and the neck undergoes a whiplash injury, there is a shearing and torsion of axons, or "wires" that send information to and from different brain areas and this torsion tends to disrupt the information that travels the farthest in the brain.
So what does this mean for you? That the dizziness, brain fog, balance issues, fatigue, light and sound sensitivity, irritability, and headaches that you are experiencing post-concussion are all related. You might appear fine to an outside observer, but your nervous system has disrupted connections to these subcortical structures. This means your visual, vestibular, and autonomic centers. If we work on sending proper blood flow, nutrition, and oxygenation to the se designated brain areas through patient-specific therapies, we can decrease the symptomatology with concussions.
-So that screens will become more tolerable
- so you can go into a busy store again without getting fatigued and lightheaded
-so you can carry on a conversation without brain fog
-and ultimately get back to living your life in the way you were before concussions
Chronic Pain
What we know about chronic pain has drastically changed in the past 1-2 decades. We used to think pain was linked to one structure. One disc, one facet, one injury, etc. For decades, patients were prescribed temporary fixes. Opiods/narcotics... bed rest until the pain goes down. However, resting rarely helps when the problem isn't one tissue or one structure.
Instead, it's the brain on red alert that there is danger. We now know that while acute pain CAN be linked to structural damage (ie. a torn ligament from an ankle sprain can lead to tissue redness, warmth, swelling, and an aggravation of pain nerves) chronic pain usually persists way longer after the intial inflammatory response has passed.
Maybe you had an injury months or years ago. Slowly but surely, you are moving less, guarding more. It seems like things are only getting worse as you are no longer able to exercise, run errands, or even take care of yourself without hurting. It's hard to be present with family and friends due to pain. Or maybe, there is a constant fear surrounding moving too much and making it worse. You feel like you are in a fog and have noticed your anxiety and depression worsening since your pain started.
Does this sound like you?
Chronic Pain
If so, then this is the place for you to obtain a deeper understanding of your pain and work with a clinician who not only has spent a decade studying chronic pain but has also lived through it herself. She will listen to your story, explain the science behind pain, and help target the brain areas respondible for inhibiting your pain.
This could include:
-visual and vestibular therapy
-infrared light therapy
-passive/calming nervous system techniques
-manual therapy/ hands on care
-cognitive exercises
-physical exercises (depending on tolerance)
-take-home exercises
If this sounds like something that might interest you, give Dr Hannah a call to learn more
Dizziness
Dizziness can be incredibly debilitating. Maybe you woke up a week ago with room-spinning dizziness or have lingering motion sickness after a previous head injury. Nonetheless, it can be frustrating to not be able to do the things you want to do due to your dizziness, especially when no one is able to "see" what you are experiencing internally.
Dr Hannah will start by taking a detailed history, including the onset, severity, and frequency of your dizzy episodes. She will ask about triggers for it, possible medications, and what makes it better or go away entirely. She will then put you through a series of diagnostic tests to determine if it's a peripheral issue (ie, a problem with one of the structures in your inner ear) or a central issue (trouble with how information from your eyes, ears, or neck muscles is relayed to your brain about where you are in space.
Dizziness
Have you experienced any of the following?
-room spinning when turning your head or body
-room spinning when getting up and changing positions in bed at night
-lightheadedness/unsteadiness when walking down a busy street
-feeling as though you are walking on clouds
-tunnel vision when walking down the road
-motion sickness when riding in a car/ train/ bus
-trouble riding in elevators
-swaying/rocking when your body is perfectly still
-balance problems, running into things
-trouble with people/ objects coming towards you on a busy street
From our diagnostic process, we will determine if there are objective findings with the visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive systems that correlate with your symptoms and design a unique treatment plan aimed to decrease your dizzines and help you feel stable
Migraines
If you are looking for a new approach to migraine relief that doesn't just rely on injections, medications, or symptom relief then you are in the right place!
Migraines can be debilitating. Missed work days, nausea and vomitting, light sensitivity, brain fog, neck pain and fatigue.
You deserve to have permanent relieft from your migraines. Not just a quick fix.
There are various influences behind migraines. Through Dr Hannah's neurologic and metabolic testing, we work together to uncover the underlying "why" behind your headachess. That way, I can design a treatment plan to decrease the frequency and severity. Not just temporary, but for good.
Other conditions we work with include Long COVID, ADHD/ Autism, anxiety/ depression, neck pain, fatigue, Parkinsons, FND, and more! Call our office to see if we can help!