Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
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Healthy Living by Willow Creek Springs
Invisible Illness, Real Solutions: Tackling POTS with Dr. Diana Driscoll
What happens when a doctor becomes the patient? For Dr. Diana Driscoll, contracting a virus led to a decade of disability from POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), a condition where the heart races upon standing. But this wasn't just about a racing heart – she documented 80 different symptoms affecting every system in her body, from severe brain fog to digestive shutdown. When her children later developed the same condition, the medical establishment offered no answers despite years in clinical trials.
Forced to become her own researcher, Dr. Driscoll's journey from bedridden patient to groundbreaking inventor reveals crucial insights about invisible illnesses that affect millions. She discovered that POTS isn't a heart problem but rather a presentation of underlying inflammation that disrupts the autonomic nervous system, particularly the vagus nerve – the body's primary anti-inflammatory pathway. This creates a vicious cycle where inflammation blocks the very nerve that should control it.
The breakthrough came when Dr. Driscoll identified patterns of low acetylcholine release and developed Parasym Plus, a patented supplement that restores vagus nerve function. Patients report improved cognition within 20 minutes, normalized digestion, and relief from numerous symptoms traditional medicine couldn't address. Her work challenges the standard approach of treating symptoms rather than underlying causes, providing hope for those with conditions like POTS, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and even age-related inflammatory issues.
Now celebrating the 10-year anniversary of POTS Care, Dr. Driscoll advocates for a fundamental shift in how we approach invisible illnesses. "Patients are not getting validated for an extraordinarily high level of suffering," she explains, sharing her mission to change how these conditions are labeled and treated. Her journey proves that sometimes the most profound medical advances come not from large institutions but from those who've lived through the problem themselves and refused to accept that nothing could be done.
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Well, hello and welcome back to the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine, and today we have a very special guest. Her name is Dr Diana Driscoll and she's an authority on the autonomic nervous system. She's an optometrist and a world-renowned expert on POTS and if you don't know what that is, it's postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and other invisible illnesses, and I happen to know some people that are dealing with POTS. I don't know a lot about it. I'm looking forward to hearing about it. But she's also an author, a speaker, an inventor, a devoted researcher with five patents to date, and she continues to push forward with dramatic shifts in the evaluation and treatment of these conditions. That's a pretty strong lead-in. Diana, welcome to the show. We're glad to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It's really an honor to be here.
Speaker 1:Well, so, as always, I like to find out. You know what brings a guest here, and it sounds like you have had a personal battle with POTS, and I only recently a couple of years ago became even aware of the condition, but I now know a couple of people that suffer from it. Why don't you tell us a little bit about this?
Speaker 2:Yes, Well, it's gaining more notoriety, if you will, because so many patients with COVID have ended up with POTS about 10 to 14% so you're probably hearing of it more often. But, as you stated, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome means that when a patient goes from laying down to being vertical their heart starts to race. But unfortunately that kind of intimates that it's a heart problem. And thoughts is not a heart problem. The heart is reacting to something and a real diagnosis would be whatever is driving that fast heart rate and whatever's driving that also causes a lot of other damage. So patients end up with oh so many symptoms.
Speaker 2:I had at one point in my journey 80 symptoms and I had a list on my computer and I would get on the computer and change them every time I went to a doctor. It was like chasing a moving target, wow. Ultimately it affected every system of the body and I had to start figuring it out because no one could help. I was completely disabled by this and then my kids got sick later from just regular viruses. I can't blame the virus. My son was bedridden. He missed three years of school. No one had any idea what was happening. We were in clinical trials for years and their conclusion was well, we think POTS patients are just more aware of their own body.
Speaker 1:You've got to be kidding right. That sounds like fibromyalgia for a while.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Chronic fatigue syndrome. Yeah right, there's invisible illnesses. Patients don't get any validation. Joe, I thought, well, I'll get some sort of help because I'm a doctor, I'm almost 50 years old, I got sick from a virus. They're not recognizing what's happening because I'm not getting to the right doctor.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:You know it isn't some subtle illness. I could just push through. You know I couldn't do it and that wasn't the case. I probably went to 50 doctors and they couldn't figure it out. So I was forced into becoming a researcher and I thought well, here I am in the body of a patient. I have children affected. Both of my kids are sick. I'm an eye doctor, maybe I am in position to get some answers for us. And ultimately that's where some of those patents came from Figured things out and then figured out my kids, and then we thought what else could bring people to this end point, to cause POTS? How can we help others? And this week actually is POTS Care's 10-year anniversary and patients feel this back. So it was not something I'd wish upon anyone, not a drug I'd want to repeat um, but it ended up with a good ending, yeah so what?
Speaker 1:what have you found? I mean, what is this? A genetic um mutation, is it? It's a reaction to a I I'm so glad you asked yeah, yeah, I mean I, I'm going to ask that to you? Yeah, well, I'm solving a cancer problem right now, and I've learned a lot about cancer and it's not what anybody thinks it is. You know, there's all these different causes, all these different issues and there's not a quicker, better answer to any of this, and that's why I'm kind of curious about this one amazing isn't that right.
Speaker 2:Well, doctors like to label something and treat according to a label right, standard of care, right, yeah, and I've been there. You know you have eight minutes with the patient. You have to move things along. Their job is not really to dig into, you know, your genetics or whatever, to try to piece together those things. So I understand that pressure of seeing patients. I have been there, but in my case we had to.
Speaker 2:We didn't have a choice but, the first thing I did when I was put into the position um, and I had been sick gosh, three and a half years at that point, wow. I set up genetic disease investigators because I was thinking, like you, what are the chances I could develop POTS, my kids could develop POTS, my husband at the time was fine and there's no genetic component.
Speaker 2:I thought there's got to be something and along the journey I was told I was hypermobile, I was stretchy, my connective tissue is abnormal and they said it's a genetic disorder of collagen. Okay, what are? Where are the genes for that? And they go. Oh, we don't know. Okay, we're missing too much here. I have a feeling it goes deeper than this. So POTS is not a disease, right, it's a presentation. It's like saying you have a fever. You can't say there's genes responsible for a fever. That just doesn't make any sense. So it's not like there's POTS genes but there's certain genes that set us up for the propensity to it.
Speaker 2:And in the patients we see, the vast majority are inflammatory patients and it's what we call subclinical, meaning CRP and CEDR. What doctors usually use to measure inflammation is usually normal. So you have to go deeper than that. Those are still inflammatory patients, but the inflammation is causing those dominoes to fall and you want to know where's the source of the inflammation and what dominoes have fallen. So it was gosh. 12 years ago I put out the Driscoll theory and I'm happy to share that with your listeners. That revealed some of these layers that were common among patients and one of them was a propensity to develop high intracranial pressure, and it escaped diagnosis, usually because it didn't display as typical. We didn't get the typical signs of swollen optic nerves or in the MRI the brain MRIs they usually looked basically normal. So doctors will miss that. We can't afford to miss that.
Speaker 2:And then inflammation commonly blocks a neurotransmitter that affects the parasympathetic nervous system, that's your rest and digest system. So when that happens, then the patient's digestion becomes abnormal, like my gallbladder completely shut down. I want to think about this because I have a feeling the organ itself sounds healthy. Maybe I can save this, and indeed I could the pancreas, stomach acid, importantly, motility of the stool. So patients end up with constipation, usually punctuated with diarrhea, and can go into full-blown gastroparesis where just nothing is moving, and then that causes other issues. I got to the point Joe, the malabsorption of nutrients was so significant I was hallucinating Whoa, and no one ever considered the possibility. I was malabsorbing. I wasn't an alcoholic, I didn't have celiac disease or Crohn's or something. My son developed severe osteoporosis. He broke his arm throwing a ball putting on a coat. He was eating but he wasn't absorbing those nutrients. I was able to figure that out Then I just sat down and thought it'd be great to get those nerves working again, replace the neurotransmitter I was missing in the brain, restore that rest and digest system.
Speaker 1:So I was it sounds like a big task.
Speaker 2:Well, it was at the time, but I thought what else do I have to do? Right, I'm 100% focused on that and I was always been just a real geek. I loved organic chemistry. My father was a chemistry professor, so I sat down with what I learned about genetics, what I knew about chemistry, and tried to put together, using existing supplements, something that would replace this neurotransmitter. It would correct for any genetic defects along the pathway of making that neurotransmitter. It needed to cross the blood-brain barrier to support cognition and, importantly, I wanted to see a bowel movement, because if we saw a bowel movement we knew that the nerve was getting triggered right and that's your anti-inflammatory nerve. So it was quite the journey, but I'm very proud of it and I remember sitting in my kitchen just putting this together for my kids and I.
Speaker 2:I had no intention of proud of it and I remember sitting in my kitchen just putting this together for my kids and I. I had no intention of ever releasing it, but the reason I did was I developed pancreatitis once in the hospital, secondary to an antibiotic that ignited the inflammation, and I remember thinking is there any chance that Paracin Plus the supplement mix now could restore my pancreas? I mean it'll assist the vagus nerve, which is the anti-inflammatory nerve. The pancreas is under innervation of the vagus nerve and in about two to three days things started to improve. And voila, and that's when I thought I should probably release this to others. Wow, started to get into that. So one key, too, that I'm also very proud of, because I'm an eye doctor and eye doctors don't usually get into the autonomic nervous system. No, doctors do.
Speaker 1:Nobody likes it.
Speaker 2:It's impossible, it's hard to understand, we don't have good ways of measuring it and doctors just don't like it. But when I was working, it's pretty darn necessary. Yeah, and usually it works all by itself right Right right, don't have to fiddle with it, but when it breaks it's really bad.
Speaker 2:But, the patients we see with POTS and it's across the board. They tend to have fairly large pupils and that's an imbalance of that autonomic nervous system and I thought if I hit these nerves correctly, the pupils should normalize, they should get a little bit smaller and indeed that happened. So I knew we were doing more than just the vagus nerve and tear production increased. So it was great to be able to release that also for these chronic dry eye patients who don't feel all that well to help them with that. So I was pretty proud it came full circle. You know, after getting sick, not able to work for over 10 years, I could give something back to the profession.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So tell me about this product. Yeah, what's it all about? I mean, is it herbs, is it minerals? What's it made out of?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an over-the-counter supplement.
Speaker 2:Okay so it's a blend of everything's already deemed safe by the FDA, and that was really important to me, and I also didn't want to have to come up with a new drug, right, because what kind of trillions of dollars, you know, does that take? I couldn't wait 10 or 15 years for that, and I knew my kids couldn't wait. Patients can't years for that, and I knew my kids couldn't wait. Patients can't wait for that. But when we know the mechanism of action of things and we have a goal, it's just, it's a problem to be solved.
Speaker 2:And so combination of those ingredients, looking for that nerve to trigger with the bowel movement, looking for the pupils to get smaller, and then I had to make sure that patients didn't adapt to it. Where the receptors receive these chemicals and then they start to shut down because they have plenty of that chemical, that can happen and then the patient needs more and more of it and that's not good. So it was about three years of putting all that together and I'm happy to say it's changed many lives and continues to do so. It's called Parasym Plus for parasympathetic nervous system plus crosses the blood brain barrier for cognition, and I say cognition like good thinking or no brain fog. I got to the point not only did I feel like I was demented, but I couldn't stay awake.
Speaker 2:What first started in my illness was severe insomnia. I was awake for days, even with drugs morphed into. I was awake maybe an hour and a half in the morning, an hour and a half in the evening, and I was struggling to stay awake. Then and I had a wonderful neurologist and he said this sounds neurodegenerative. This is what we see. I said well, we just get worse and we just stop waking up. You know what the heck? Paracin plus. I need it because I could stay awake. It was amazing to see so the brain support was significant too. So paracin excellent, excellent.
Speaker 1:And where? Where can somebody find this? I am dealing with what they call chemo fog and oh I, I I'm in the end game of solving a very difficult cancer right now and I've I've gone down a road that's solving it. But you know there's a price you got to pay with your cognition and your, you know, memory and all this stuff. That is temporary, but I'm looking to clear it out quick as I can.
Speaker 2:You know, out quick as they can. You know, the patients we see will sometimes feel cognition improve 20 minutes after taking it Nice, because it does quickly cross the blood-brain barrier. The more brain fog or exhaustion we see and we'll see patients, you know, just kind of barely holding it together and it goes into the bloodstream and you can see them perk up and the sparkle comes back into the eyes. So the more affected the patient, the more dramatic you can see that response. That's usually the first thing we see. The second is the bowel movement.
Speaker 2:So, we recommend patients take it first thing in the morning, wait 45 minutes or so before eating or as soon as they have a bowel movement. It's fair game. But in any form of cognitive decline or struggles we want to support this neurotransmitter. Any form of dementia, that's the first thing that's done. So I'm very proactive in my health now, brain health certainly, because now my body's fine right you don't want to have old age again. I already went through that right yeah.
Speaker 2:So anything I can do to support it, I do, and I think I'm the most active person I know of. Uh, brain's working great, you know, that's great. So I would encourage certainly anyone dealing with brain fog to support that neurotransmitter and don't lose hope because the neurons reattach. It's amazing. I had nothing, I was working with nothing for a while and it took time. I would see numbers like a phone number and I couldn't remember them. Practice it and make sure I could write it down and then start reading easy novels where it was like one or two characters, see if I could follow it, and it all did come back. But the brain is fairly plastic.
Speaker 1:It's very amazing I've had a couple of brain injuries that somehow I'm still out here talking and being somewhat reasonable.
Speaker 2:There you go, there you go. Well, I actually had brain lesions and we could see them on the MRI. That was scary, and I encourage everyone to not ever lose hope in seeing something objective like that and thinking there's no way around that then. Oh, that's it for me.
Speaker 1:Oh, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing what we can overcome. And you had asked where Parasyn Plus is. That's on VegasNerveSupportcom or the company's called TJ Nutritionrition and TJ was named after my kids, nice, my husband, james. Well, it's kind of a family thing, you know. That's where it started, love it.
Speaker 1:We'll make sure that gets into the show notes for people.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. Again, I'm really excited about how that can change lives. And we just look for the patterns of low acetylcholine release. That's the only way to figure it out. There is no blood test for this right, because the body breaks it down immediately. So we talked about brain fog. We can get light, sensitive Pupils can get big, we get sluggish digestion, lean toward constipation perhaps, and we see more fatigue, mental fatigue and physical fatigue, and oftentimes patients. They don't have to have pots for this, they just have some sort of chronic inflammatory condition, like aging, for example, is one of them.
Speaker 1:Inflammating Happens to everybody yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they'll say, oh, it's stress, or I'm just not eating right or whatever. I think you know, I don't think that's it and I think if we stay on top of the inflammation, we won't necessarily have to deal with a lot of these old age illnesses uh, the tendency for dementia, for example, or vascular endothelial problems, that sort of thing. So there's so much more we can do to be proactive, and had I not gone through POTS and that horror, I wouldn't be thinking in those terms.
Speaker 1:Right right.
Speaker 2:I think now I'm probably healthier because of that journey. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Seems that inflammation has now been widely recognized as a major I don't know monster out there. That's, that's behind every problem that is physiologically attacking us, and so, but there's also so many causes for it and so many ways to approach it. So this is, and one that I hadn't really heard of before, with POTS, has there been development Like I mean from, let's say, when this was happening to you and you were going to all these doctors and nobody knew anything? Is there now better ways to recognize this condition?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, but it's not always advantageous, unfortunately. So to recognize POTS, you have the patient stand up and then it becomes pretty obvious. Heart starts racing. The problem with that is when the patients get that diagnosis. The traditional treatment for POTS is purely to try to cover up symptoms. Pots is purely to try to cover up symptoms, so we've been waving this flag for over 10 years of. Instead we need to locate and treat the underlying problems and those dominoes that have fallen. And POTS is not a good label. Pots is again just the presentation. So it's my mission to change the labels where it's more labeling the underlying problem, be it the inflammatory problem, whatever that is, preferably with a genetic tendency for it and then we can measure things in the blood and say there it is and this is our treatment. And then let's be real aware of this so you don't get sick again of this. So you don't get sick again and POTS will be seen just like a fever is seen where it's just one sign of an underlying problem.
Speaker 1:So you're actually going to a source, not just the outward symptom.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right Because sadly, Joe, a lot of what doctors do traditionally to try to cover the symptoms makes patients worse.
Speaker 1:It certainly did me. That's a lot of what this podcast is about is finding real answers and not just cover-ups. It's not to make modern medicine sinister or anything. It's just the road that it takes so many times and treating a problem rather than solving a problem, and there's a big difference.
Speaker 2:No, absolutely, and I was in a good position to get answers, I will admit, even though it took 10 years, you know, and if a big institution like an academic institution is so clunky, they have to spend years raising money for a trial, and the trial may or may not be successful, and there were so many layers to so many aspects, so an independent researcher can move fast, right, and I was able to do that, so it did help a lot yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, we're getting a little low on time, but I did want to hear about these patents of yours and also, just so you know, this is an offer I make to most of my guests. We have a lot more we could talk about and I certainly want to welcome you back to go deep into any of these topics, but you've just got such a gigantic body of work. I'm just curious about these patents that you've acquired.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for that, Joe, and I'd love to come back, and I can you know, until the cows come out.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:When I figured out what was going on with this nerve and how I worked through the problem and ultimately restored that neurology, I thought I think this is new science. I don't think anybody's ever tried to do this before and so, not knowing how difficult it was to get a patent certainly one involving supplements that's not something that's done I just sat down and read about patents and decided I was going to write one, wrote it. You know, ignorance is bliss. So I went to a patent attorney and got it and then so that was basically what Paracin Plus was about and I was looking at everything. I threw everything into this patent. Considering like connective tissue disorders or what I was told was Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, the autonomic nervous system, chronic inflammation, just threw all kinds of things in there and then kind of evolved into more of the dry eye component. Wrote patents for that.
Speaker 2:No one had ever figured out that the vagus nerve that controls inflammation, every aspect of digestion, that rest or digest system, the receptors for that nerve are what we call nicotinic. But no one had ever figured out a way to stimulate both the nicotinic receptors and different receptor, muscarinic. And the muscarinic receptors are in the pupil. So when I saw the pupils get smaller. I knew it was big news Nice, and it was something in our dry eye patients. As an eye doctor, you know we never looked at that. We never looked at how large our pupils were. We knew they were light sensitive. We assumed it was from the cornea drying out. But we look at the cornea, it doesn't look that dry and everything started to click. You know, chronic dry eye patients tend to be depressed. They tend to have sluggish digestion or brain fog or whatever. It was almost like looking at a POTS patient and turning it way down.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So To be able to give answers for those people too. That was more of the patents too.
Speaker 1:Well, I like the way you think and I love problem solvers. I'm a formulator and a problem solver and I think we probably have a lot in common with that.
Speaker 1:I think you're right, you've got a lot more degrees than I do, but I live my life and find my answers, so I'm really impressed and I respect very much your journey. I think when people find a problem and they go after it rather than just flopping in the wind going well, I'm a victim, I'm stuck, I'm this, I'm that, that's inspiring and it's what we need, and so I thank you for being part of the solution.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, you're very kind and I appreciate you for helping us get word out. I'm just one voice. I hear you.
Speaker 1:Well, why don't you give us your parting shot and how people can get a hold of you or find out your products, your information, anything that you want to share?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm at POTScarecom and the supplements that are patented are VegasNerveSupportcom the POTS groups that we have. That's going against that traditional treatment. That's making patients worse. We call them POTS rebels and I have a Patreon account for that, and I'll meet with people we talk about things, offer support and share this information, because I really want to stop how certainly how POTS, but a lot of these invisible illnesses are being judged. Patients are not getting validated for an extraordinarily high level of suffering, and that needs to change.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much again, and we look forward to having you back. This has been another edition of the Healthy Living Podcast. I'm your host, joe Grumbine. We thank all of our listeners and we will see you next time.
