Why Dysautonomia Makes You Sensitive To Everything

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Why the ANS can react so strongly to seemingly non-stressful situations even when orthostatic positioning is taken out of the equation.

[00:00:11]Poor dampening of the alarm system is that what it is.

[00:00:15]For many people, so I don't want to over-generalize this. But for many people, that's what it's become. So you kind of get a little bit of a habit over time where you are your body is used to reacting to things in a certain way. It's anticipating it.

[00:00:32]And it takes some time to be able to work through that anticipatory strategy.

[00:00:36]So this is where the self-talk matters.

[00:00:38]This is where like walking yourself through it matters, being able to calm your breathing matters. So you're kind of like disengaging that alarm response. Some people react strongly because there's a stressor there that we're just not picking up on and then we just kind of assume we're overreacting to something, but it's really our body reacting to something that we're not fully aware of.

[00:01:02]So those are both available, but especially once you see people starting to get stronger, but they're still feeling that that in you. Um it some of that just takes a little bit of time where you're talking your body down and you're like, "Hey, we did it.

[00:01:15]Let's let's take the alarm level down a notch." I can remember um Yeah. Well, maybe I won't talk about that. But just um there are times when that old feeling pops in and it just kind of grabs you out of nowhere and it's almost like it scares you and you feel all of that kind of well up again.

[00:01:36]It's particularly difficult in my perspective for people that have been going through autonomic problems because they're they're so inner inner interwoven. Meaning like the things that you really don't want to feel are are like the things you feel with that level of like being alarmed or anxious or or whatever that might be.

[00:02:01]So, it takes you like full circle back into what you're trying to get away from. So, it's like extra jarring versus if that's not the thing you're worried about and you notice like, "Woo, I made my heart race a little bit, made me a little nervous. Woo, I don't like that." But, it doesn't feel as it doesn't feel as uh as difficult as it might if that's the thing that you had been feeling you've gotten away from or you have moments where it's not that and then you feel it come back then it's extra scary.

[00:02:28]So, um exactly what you're saying, poor damping the alarm system. So, we want to use exposure to that. And but then also for some people it's using those frontal feedback mechanisms to get better at damping it back down again. Great question, as always.

[00:02:41]If you have dysautonomia, would shots be safe? It's not the vaccine fear.

[00:02:45]>> [snorts] >> So, to the degree that they're safe for anyone, um again, not medical advice.

[00:02:51]I'm not giving shots. Don't have the ability to tell you to get shots or not.

[00:02:55]Um but the thing that's interesting to think about is some people if they're reactive, I don't know if this is the question you're asking or not. Um so, some people that have had injuries related to iatrogenic causes, this is the way we say like shots or vaccines or anything like chemical medications, stuff like that, right?

[00:03:21]So, we've had a reaction that sometimes within vaccines people have reactions to the adjuvant. It's another conversation from today.

[00:03:30]The adjuvant in a vaccine is the thing that like kind of kicks the hornet's nest. It wakes up your immune system and says, "Hey, pay attention to this." It's like you know, in Jurassic Park when they wave at the dinosaur and they're like, "Follow me."

[00:03:41]You know, that's the adjuvant.

[00:03:44]Um but some people are reactive to that because their job is to stir up your immune system a little bit.

[00:03:50]And so, but once you become reactive to that, then the question is is like do you have potential to be reactive to it again in the future? And so, those are the the cases where we have to to think about that and think about what are the best ways to approach this. What is the the kind of the cost-benefit analysis? Great thing to talk to your GP about if they're opening to talk about it. Um and anything that's going to obviously be a a catalyst to an immune response when we have dysautonomia, we just want to be aware of what we're getting into with that.

[00:04:20]Because if we have a hyperkinetic response already, hypersensitive response already, um then we might get a more robust response to that immunological um stimulus. And we just want to kind of be aware of what we're getting into. So, it's not saying you should, it's not saying you shouldn't. It just helps you work through the problem and like how you could think about uh how to do that.

[00:04:40]What is the cost and what is the benefit? And then um trying to, you know, make a good decision for 2 years in bed post C, even when lying down, feeling light-headed, nauseous, fatigued.

[00:04:52]Symptoms will go away for weeks at time.

[00:04:54]That's cool. Um what explains this?

[00:04:56]Blood pressure drops when standing. Uh managed with meds, but no change in symptoms.

[00:05:02]It's a really interesting question because obviously this is a this is a constellation that we see quite a bit.

[00:05:08]This is a symptom constellation that is pretty common. So, there's so many things I want to check.

[00:05:14]Maybe I'll talk about it that way. We'll talk about things I'd want to know.

[00:05:18]So, I am very interested in this part where talks about blood pressure dropping when you're standing.

[00:05:22]Um that's really interesting because it means it whatever is going on in that feedback loop is not kicking in. And then when I think about laying down light-headedness, I want to know how that correlates with with the same with the blood pressure side.

[00:05:38]The nausea is also a thing that is going to be very interesting there because we want to see how our how are you able to transmit through those baroreceptor systems and are they is the sensitivity changed and do you see that translating into feedback into the NTS and then how does that correlate with activity in the cerebellum and then looking at peripheral nerves from there.

[00:06:01]So you're kind of like winding through this web. It's almost like if you got a bunch of cords that are all tangled up, you're kind of taking them apart and stripping them out so you can see where everything lies and gives you a lay of the land. So I don't have like a wonderful easy answer for you here, but you would want to look at where these things all start to correlate to each other from a control systems perspective. Um, that's what I would do.

[00:06:23]And then from there then to look at triangulating where might you be able to have an input on that system. Uh, especially if um, management with medications isn't solving it, it means that there's enough feedback loop available that that is it's not addressing the underlying. So, um, I'd love to be more help, but um, I just don't know enough and I don't want to I don't want to try to overcorrect here.