Introducing POTS: The Next Social Contagion to Grip Miserable Teenage Girls
Now that trans is on the way out and scepticism is being raised about the over-diagnosis of ADHD and autism, what are miserable teenage girls and their anxious mothers going to fixate on next? Nature abhors a vacuum and there may be a new condition in town to fill the void: POTS.
In the past couple of terms visiting schools and further education colleges I have noticed an increasing number of teenage girls using walking sticks. It is not unusual to see disabled children in mainstream schools, generally one or two in wheelchairs, also a handful of students with temporary breaks on crutches or wearing a plastic boot. But it’s a new sight, for me at least, to see teenage girls using walking sticks. Especially two girls in one group with walking sticks decorated with stickers.
When three separate girls over the past month told me that they have suspected or finally diagnosed POTS I remembered the old fashion adage: ‘Two’s a coincidence, three’s a trend.’ I have learned that POTS, as well as being a lively TikTok and Insta hashtags is short for Postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and involves feeling dizzy when standing up – hence the need for walking sticks. There is no cure and, according to the NHS, POTS “affects everyone differently”, with severe symptoms such as light-headedness or weakness or extreme tiredness. #didyouyawn is a popular hashtag for the growing community of POTS sufferers.
Annie (not her real name), a 17 year-old recently-diagnosed POTS sufferer, was able to explain things for me. “I’ve always been very tired and I feel funny every time I stand up. I printed out the POTS description for my GP who sent me to a consultant. I had to lie on a wobbly table and then get up. I said I felt dizzy so I’ve got my diagnosis which is great.” Her plan is to do a three-month nail technician course at the local college in September – but she adds sadly: “Now I have POTS, I don’t know if I’m going to manage the bus journey. It’s 80 minutes each way.” She’s been advised to stay hydrated and make sure she takes in sufficient salt but she is returning to her GP to find out if there are any pharmaceutical options. She already receives PIP payments for her anxiety and wonders what her new diagnosis will mean when she has her benefits review next month.
A teacher with 30 years experience told me:
There have always been a group of girls, usually beginning in Year 9 who are unhappy. Their unhappiness manifests differently depending on what’s current. In the 1980s it was poetry of all things, then the Goths had a good run, ME was popular until eating disorders and self-harm wreaked havoc, lesbianism was a much gentler option until that became passé and trans, ADHD and autism took a hold.
A quick look at the videos about POTS on TikTok and Insta seems to bear this observation out – the girls with the condition are of a type: there is a splatter of pink or blue hair and a bracing selection of piercings, as well as a sufficiency of pretty girls to add a level of appeal. A number of celebrities have been diagnosed including Solange Knowles and Jameela Jamil.
Google trends analytics demonstrate a dramatic increase in searching for the term between 2022 and 2025, while the NHS doesn’t keep a track of the diagnosis rates, it may surprise non-POTS sufferers that over 77 million people have viewed posts on #potslife that share such details about how to use ice-packs and carry salt sachets. As well as POTS, social trends in relation to chronic illness include EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome) and MCAS (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome) which variously cause among other things joint pain, inflammation and brain fog. Annie explained to me that energy for all such chronic illnesses are measured in spoons #spoonenergy.
Our collective health could indeed be in an ever-increasing state of collapse, which would go some way to explaining the growing number of young women who have postural tachycardia syndrome – a condition that is diagnosed in the geriatric wing of hospitals. It could also be the case that the girls who are using walking sticks in schools or FE colleges and think they have POTS and other chronic illnesses are unhappy. Unhappy because they come from broken homes, their families are skint, elite advice about how to live well is at odds with biological realities, their social lives are threadbare, schools haven’t taught sufficiently useful skills or knowledge and they spend hours a day on their phones instead of socialising and working. When these girls assess their prospects and see them to be bleak, there is a perverse wisdom in finding a sense of belonging with a group of like-minded fellow sufferers online.
POTS or no POTS, it is this malaise that we as a society ought to be addressing. And fast, before we all go potty.
Mary Gilleece is an education support worker and her name is a pseudonym.
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What a joke, already gets PIP, so no doubt will not ever work, whats the next excuse?.
When the POTS is in remission, I foresee a bad case of COBBLES.
OMG, are all teenage girls going to panic if they plug in an old phone into a socket and don’t get a dialtone? BT will have to cancel their IP phone rollout!
Network engineer jokes about Plain Old Telephone Service aside, you get the impression that most social contagion issues are caused by the inability of supposed experts to say no 🙁
Ah! POTS and PANS (Premium And New Services) was so 1970s: alarm calls, ring-back-when-free… . How did we survive without them? IIRC in the 1960s teenage girls, lacking home phones, hung around in groups next to pay-on-answer red phone kiosks, waiting for the phone to ring so they could have endless calls.
I didn’t notice the full stop in.. ” , with severe symptoms such as light-headedness or weakness or extreme tiredness. #didyouyawn is…”
Harsh I thought, but I did yawn. Does that make me a bad person?
Anyhow, why not publish a peer review study that shows POTS is immediately cured by stacking roof tiles, bricks, other heavy objects, and by doing plumbing jobs and joining the army.
POTS is also a well-known symptom of injury from the covid mRNA vaccines.
“The risks of POTS after COVID-19 vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection: more studies are needed”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44161-022-00180-z
More studies are needed – to prove POTS has nothing to do with covid “vaccination”.
Tick Tock.
We are setting up an inquiry, to clear their names, of course.
Yep, my daughter-in-law who is already disabled (but works) suffers from POTs since the vaccine, but she swears that it was Covid that caused it. It’s not just a feeling of dizziness it’s a racing heartbeat – frightening for someone who has TAR syndrome (low platelets, missing radius and ulna, shortened legs).
Of course, it could just be low blood pressure…
low blood pressure is one of many physical symptoms of PoTS. The diagnositc critera is a increase of heart rate 30 bpm greater standing compared to lying.
Yes, my son had PoTS from age 13. My daughter had ‘mild’ symptoms until she had covid and then PoTS became a daily issue for her. Any virus though with a high temperature is at risk of setting off PoTS in someone prone to it.
Exactly what I was thinking when I read it. However, why didn’t the author mention the amount of boys vs girls that have it? Do males not get POTS or something?🤔
I had something which could fit these symptoms for a long time in the aftermath of COVID and I certainly never had a COVID vaccine.
My thoughts also. Obviously, being science-denying Literally Hitlers as we are.
As a previously unvaccinated (against anything) teenager in the late sixties, a hospital casualty department vaccinated me against tetanus following a cycling accident. Paroxysmal tachycardia followed within 2 years and became a life-long debility. I have recently read that the tetanus jabs from that time were particularly dangerous. More likely than not in my case it was also unnecessary and ineffective biologically because a deep wound had already been sustained.
It’s so easy to dismiss something as not real, as “a social contagion”, when you are not experiencing it yourself. But what if these young people are suffering vaccine damage? Is vaccine damage not real?
Covid vaccine sceptics cannot have it both ways: complaining about how unsafe and damaging the Covid vaccines are, and then – when many people complain about some ailment that could be caused by the vaccines – dismiss their experiences as imaginary.
If these young people are suffering from POTs due to vaccine damage, it’s very real, and no amount of stacking roof tiles, bricks, other heavy objects, or doing plumbing jobs or joining the army will cure it.
[I think we posted simultaneously.] Yes, mRNA injury was the very first thing I thought. It’s a widely documented symptom.
Yes I wonder how many yellow cards have been reported with this reported as an after-effect of getting jabbed.
We can expect and endless stream of this kind of idiocy in a world in which victimhood confers status.
The establishment damages young people, and then anti-establishment sceptics brand them ‘miserable’, accuse them of idiocy and wanting to portray themselves as victims – it’s no wonder so many of these young people suffer depression and other mental health problems.
Im obviously no establishment apologist, but how exactly does the establishment make girls think they are disabled?
For instance, by creating and maintaining an environment for vicitimhood confers status. That’s not normal for human societies, just for our degenerate one. Normally, being healthy and powerful confers status.
NB: I’ve intentionally used your wording for simplicity. Constantly trampling on children’s minds by asserting that climate- or whatnot-armageddon is just round the corner unless they give up almost everything which makes their lives worth living is also not exactly a way to keep people mentally sane.
Pay attention, stewart: By convincing and pressurising them to get a vaccine that causes them to be disabled.
Or maybe you think the Covid vaccine has not damaged any young person?
If it’s covid jabs, why is it a girl only phenomenon?
I think I’ve read that there were a lot of ‘hysterical’ young women in late Imperial Rome too, and of course Edwardian women were famous for swooning. Both times of apparent plenty and real-problemlessness that preceded periods of upheaval and decline. Female hormones at puberty cause absolute chaos in the mind/emotions (I remember it well), and it’s helpful for teenage girls to be able to rely on a stable environment to counteract that effect. Is this demographic perhaps particularly sensitive to underlying instability, with such neuroses signalling a more general loss of confidence in society?
I was going to mention swooning Victorians too. Probably their diet and the diet of young girls/women today is not optimal. (Think all those energy drinks with sugar and caffeine leading to ups and downs). As to why young men do not have the same symptoms perhaps they do but the author has not yet picked up what they might be, probably being off school games for starters.
PoTS isn’t in this category – it has observable, objective, measurable symptoms.
Many conditions like that are over-diagnosed, agreed to by GPs without proper understanding or simply claimed without bothering to get a diagnosis. As I’ve mentioned below, ME is one example. It’s the over-claiming that’s the problem, and that makes ordinary people think the whole thing is rubbish.
PoTS is based on evidenced, measurable symptoms and is not in this category.
POTS affects blokes as well. I got a dose yesterday sat on the terrace of our local boozer here in Spain. Five hours, two bottles of vino—Bingo! Wobbly as ten bastards.
Hahaha
We discuss the fact that kids are using dating apps LESS these days in our latest podcast. You can listen to it here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1268768/episodes/17445552
Non-PC old bloke warning!
This will bring a new meaning to dizzy blondes.
Oh dear, I may have had POTS for the last 70 years. Every time I get upr after lying down, I feel dizzy for a few seconds until the blood pressure to my brain returns to normal.
Just think of all the backdated PIP payments you could request. There’s always a bright side.
Correct – everyone has a response to standing up like this. For a PoTS sufferer, that is sustained (with measurable symptoms) due to a failure in the autonomic nervous system.
“It
could also beis the case that the girls who are using walking sticks in schools or FE colleges and think they have POTS and other chronic illnesses are unhappy. Unhappy because they come from broken homes, their families are skint, elite advice about how to live well is at odds with biological realities, their social lives are threadbare, schools haven’t taught sufficiently useful skills or knowledge and they spend hours a day on their phones instead of socialising and working.”I enjoy the subtlety, author, I just wanted to remove any ambiguity 😉
But the author didn’t mention boys with this condition once, so don’t boys also come from broken homes and skint families? Everything she says could equally be applied to boys, so these theories therefore lack credibility, in my opinion. I’m pretty sure depression or lacking a social life isn’t sex-specific.
What are the numbers for male and female teenage suicides I wonder as I am under the impression there are more boys.
I was mainly friends with boys at high school, and their hormone-related issues were nothing like mine (not necessarily less impactful, but very different). I didn’t see a single one of them start crying for no reason, become paranoid about whether their friends really hate them, etc., and of course they didn’t get PMT or period pain. That pain is not limited to stomach cramps – you get pains and discomfort all over, and if you don’t know it’s period related (and no one told us that in the ’90s) you could easily start worrying that you have some medical condition, especially as you’re far more prone to worry in general in that hormonal state. I had the most appalling periods as a teenager, with barely a week a month *without* discomfort, so for me at least it didn’t feel like easily identifiable one-week-of-the-month ‘female problems’. Males and females are never so different as during adolescence, so it doesn’t surprise me that their reactions are very different too.
And yet there was no girls going around with walking sticks in the ’90s or noughties. We just got on with things. Having your period isn’t a handicap and kids have been going through puberty since the dawn of time. It was never seen as a convenient culprit to explain away various weird and unnatural maladies or behaviours.
There were a lot of girls with eating disorders, self-harm, obsessive crushes and the like though. We did largely get on with things in the end, for which I’m grateful, but I feel that was helped by the fact that 1) society was much less accepting of nonsense and 2) we’d never have been exposed to the idea of something like POTS in the first place because we’d have had to go to a physical library and hunt through complex medical books to even know it existed. If I’d had Google as a teenager I’d probably have been trans and had a double mastectomy.
In time gone by, these differences were acknowledged through cultural practices, even though medical knowledge hadn’t advanced to its current state. But now that Reality can change by decree, these differences have been removed, and any dissenter removed from any position of influence. Talk about the removal of our sophisticated society’s foundations. And no, you mustn’t do that either.
Perhaps the boys are the ones in their bedrooms on computers gaming and not going to school?
Yes isn’t it interesting that we never seem to hear of girls being addicted to gaming late into the night, for hours on end? Sometimes it’s a sociable activity to do with friends, oftentimes these kids spend extended times alone and becoming isolated as a result.
absolutely. My son from a stable home developed pots age 12. It runs in families. His sister has it too. It has measurable, physical symptoms.
My daughter comes from a stable home and has observable, measurable symptoms. PoTS has objective criteria for diagnosis. It impacts females more than males. In our patient group many have developed PoTS after the HPV vaccine. A doctor can only diagnose after seeing an heart rate on standing, greater than 30 bpm (or 40 if a teen) that is sustained. This article is very damaging to genuine sufferers.
I feel similarly about discussions of ME, an illness that put me out of action for years and will probably never stop impacting my life. There’s a family connection there too, as my aunt’s had it for decades now. It’s hard to find the right balance – there are so many people who do fake these illnesses/mistakenly think that’s what’s wrong with them, and in the end that becomes a problem that does need fixing. But fixing it by removing all support from everyone who says they’ve got the condition hurts the genuine sufferers. Same with benefit cheats and asylum seekers.
I can’t think of a good way out of the situation now, since society has changed so much and so many things that would have been shameful in past decades (like lying to get cash from your fellow countrymen’s taxes, or shouting about how weak you are and imposing on others) are now acceptable.
I think this vast array of PIP ailments would disappear overnight, if the government removed them all from the list of “disability benefits”, and announced that they would only give special benefit payments to people who are strong, sane, healthy, moral, and either working, or raising strong, sane, healthy, moral kids.
I vast number of these fake disability claims would disappear if they we forced into attending a face to face interview but those who would hold the interviews do not want the interviewees coming round to their houses because guess where they work?
My (then) 14 neice was diagnosed with POTS after fainting a couple of times. It was quite scary for her.
However she has seemed to grow out of it, she is about to turn 18, no PIP, no medication, no worries.
(I do not know if she received at of the mRNA injections)
It is a scandal how easily POTS, ADHD, Autism, etc., are being diagnosed. These labels and the financial resources attached to them should be reserved for people with severe disability, not just normal teenage angst.
PoTS is not subjective – observable, measurable symptoms. A heart rate rise on standing of greater than 30bpm compared to resting heart rate and is sustained.
Not social contagion. The jab. POTS a known after effect; one of my sons is suffering from it.
No, no, no! PoTS is very real and debilitating with low, but growing awareness in the medical community. It has physical, measurable, repeatable diagnostic critera. It is not based on feelings. Physical symptoms can be missed due to lack of knowledge (eg if heart rate is taken sitting rather than the correct way to compare lying to standing heart rate over a period of ten minutes). While any physical illness can attempt to be copied by some, this is not one that can be replicated as the symptoms are measurable however articles which are one sided and presents PoTS as ‘non-evidenced/feelings based’ do much harm to a sufferer and create barriers to getting appropriate medical assessment and support and understanding from family and friends. When my adult kids have an infection, their heart rate just standing is the similar to if they were running a race – I can see it. Accurately diagnosed, this is NOT a condition that is in someone’s head and anyone with a diagnosis has had a doctor or consultant see evidence of measurable, physical symptoms. According to the PoTSUK charity, the average time to diagnosis of PoTS is 7 years during which patients often get… Read more »
Gosh. I hope you’re getting your PIPS and your motability car and all the other things showered on hypochondriacs, skivers and shirkers.
No – just on fact based, real illness.
yes – covid vaccine and HPV vaccine. I see it in the patient group I’m in.
Why was my post deleted? I point the finger at the jab – POTS is a known consequence of the jab, my son being one of many sufferers
Increased heart rate is quite normal when people stand up, it’s caused by blood falling by gravity to the legs, when this happens the para sympathetic nervous system kicks in and lowers the heart rate. I believe it caused by lower oxygen exchange because of the fast heart rate thereby causing the brain to receive less blood which causes dizziness.
The most likely group of people to experience this is teenagers and it normally passes after a short period.