Dysautonomia
Umbrella term for malfunction of the autonomic nervous system — the part of your nervous system that runs heart rate, blood pressure, digestion and temperature without you having to think about it. POTS is one of many forms.
Reviewed 2026-05-15
What it means in practice
The autonomic nervous system runs heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, body temperature and a few dozen other background processes. When it misfires, the result is dysautonomia — an umbrella label covering many specific patterns including POTS, neurally mediated syncope, orthostatic hypotension, and pure autonomic failure.
Dysautonomia is not itself a diagnosis a specialist can settle on. What they actually diagnose is the specific syndrome — e.g. hyperadrenergic POTS or orthostatic intolerance — and the word "dysautonomia" is a useful shorthand for the family of conditions involved.
Why it matters for POTS
POTS is one of the more common forms of dysautonomia and is often where people first land when they go looking for an explanation for symptoms. Two consequences:
- Searching for "dysautonomia" will surface POTS-specific material and vice versa. They are not synonyms.
- Many POTS patients also have other dysautonomic features — gastric slowing, temperature dysregulation, sweating changes. Tracking those alongside the orthostatic numbers is often what makes the pattern visible to a clinician.