Welcome to Episode 1 of My POTS Podcast with Dr. Joe Schneider, where we uncover the enigma of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) and its deep connection to neurological wellness. With over 35 years of expertise in functional neurology, Dr. Schneider explains how POTS is part of a broader condition known as dysautonomia, impacting the nervous system and causing symptoms such as fatigue, anxiety, brain fog, and digestive issues.

In this episode, you’ll learn why cardiovascular screenings are essential for POTS patients, how neuroinflammation leads to neuronal loss and disrupted brain connections, and why environmental toxins, viral infections like COVID-19, and trauma are major triggers. Dr. Schneider also explores why POTS is on the rise, especially among young women post-COVID, and how cutting-edge diagnostics and rehabilitation at the Hope Brain and Body Recovery Center are helping patients reclaim their health.

Each episode of My POTS Podcast provides clear, practical insights in just 20–30 minutes—empowering you to make informed decisions about your neurological and cardiovascular health. Listen now and join a growing community seeking solutions for the modern epidemic of inflammation and dysautonomia.

Overview: E1: Uncovering the Enigma of POTS

• Dr. Joe Schneider introduces “My POTS Podcast,” focusing on POTS and neurological wellness, leveraging 35 years of experience in functional neurology.
• POTS is redefined as part of a broader dysautonomia condition, impacting the entire nervous system with symptoms like fatigue, anxiety, and digestive issues.
• Cardiovascular screenings by a cardiologist are essential for POTS patients due to the potential for related cardiovascular problems.
• The patient demographic for POTS has expanded significantly, affecting individuals from their 20s to 50s and even teenagers, impacting their daily quality of life.
• Neuroinflammation is identified as a core cause of POTS, leading to neuronal death and loss of brain interconnections.
• Multiple triggers for neuroinflammation include toxins, pathogens, and physical trauma, with notable influences from COVID and other viral infections.
• The Hope Brain and Body Recovery Center focuses on diagnosing and rehabilitating neuroinflammation using advanced methodologies and equipment.
• There is a modern epidemic of inflammation due to environmental toxins, super processed foods, and COVID-related cytokine storms affecting neurological health.
• A marked increase in POTS diagnoses has been observed post-COVID, particularly among young women due to autonomic system damage.
• The podcast aims to provide accessible information for informed care decisions, with episodes lasting 20-30 minutes available on hopeframecenter.com and TikTok.

Notes

🎙️ Dr. Joe Schneider introduces “My POTS Podcast” (00:00 – 00:00)

• Inaugural episode focusing on POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) and neurological wellness.
• Dr. Schneider has 35 years of experience as a functional neurologist and shares his personal stroke recovery journey.

🔍 POTS redefined as part of broader dysautonomia condition (00:00 – 00:00)

• POTS includes chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, digestive problems, breathing issues, anxiety, and depression.
• These conditions affect the whole nervous system function.

❤️ Cardiovascular screening requirement (01:43 – 01:43)

• Patients must be cleared by a cardiologist first.
• Cardiovascular issues can cause postural orthostatic tension syndrome.
• Common treatments include beta blockers, exercise, hydration, and electrolytes.

👥 Patient demographics expansion (01:43 – 01:43)

• Condition now affects people in their 20s to 50s, and even teenagers, not just the elderly.
• Significantly impacts daily life quality.

🧠 Neuroinflammation identified as core cause (03:25 – 03:25)

• Inflammation in brain stem, cortex, subcortex, and blood-brain barrier leads to loss of interconnections and neuronal death.

⚠️ Multiple inflammation triggers identified (03:25 – 03:25)

• Triggers include toxins, pathogens (COVID, Lyme, Epstein Barr, Cytomegalovirus), physical/mental trauma, neurodevelopmental issues (autism, ADHD, Asperger’s), and strep infections (PANS/PANDAS).

🛠️ Brain as master control system (05:17 – 05:17)

• Controls all body functions; POTS symptoms include brain fog, memory loss, and emotional issues like anxiety and depression alongside physical manifestations.

🏥 Hope Brain and Body Recovery Center approach (05:17 – 05:17)

• Identify neuroinflammation causes, decrease inflammation, then rehabilitate the brain through plasticity.

• Requires proper equipment for comprehensive brain rehabilitation.

🌍 Modern inflammation epidemic (07:01 – 07:01)

• Super processed foods, IGG sensitivities, mycotoxins, molds, environmental toxins, and COVID cytokine storms cause widespread neurological and autonomic damage.

📈 COVID impact on POTS diagnoses (07:01 – 07:01)

• Significant increase in POTS cases, especially in young women, due to neurological and autonomic system damage.

💓 Autonomic nervous system controls (08:34 – 08:34)

• Controls heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, urinary system, bowels, female cycles, and circulation to extremities.

📊 Patient from Arkansas case study (08:34 – 08:34)

• Demonstrates national reach of practice; vital scan revealed poor lower extremity circulation.

🔬 Comprehensive diagnostic approach (10:06 – 10:06)

• Full diagnostics provide extensive information including aerobic/anaerobic capacities.
• Develop personalized rehabilitation programs focused on fixing rather than patching.

📝 Life impact assessment (10:06 – 10:06)

• Long-term treatment plans address work, recreational activities, relationships, and hobbies to restore quality of life.

💪 Dr. Schneider’s personal experience (10:06 – 10:06)

• Stroke survivor who lost capabilities in biking, running, swimming, boating, water skiing, and snow skiing.
• Remains committed to helping others.

🎧 Podcast mission and format (11:43 – 11:43)

• Provide information for informed care decisions.
• Episodes are 20-30 minutes long, available on hopeframecenter.com and TikTok for daily insights.

Transcript

00:00
Dr. Joseph Schneider
Foreign. 

00:05
Dr. Joseph Schneider
Welcome to my POTS podcast. I’m Dr. Joe Schneider, and after 35 years as a functional neurologist, a personal journey through stroke recovery and helping thousands of patients, I’m here to share breakthrough solutions for pots Neurological wellness. From getting out of bed in the morning to rebuilding your nervous system, this is your guide to understanding and overcoming neurological challenges. Let’s begin this journey to recovery together. 

00:35
Dr. Joseph Schneider
All right, we’re on. This is really kind of fantastic. This is a long time coming. Our POTS podcast, we’re going to be calling it my POTS podcast. When you have pots, right? Like most of the patients that we have coming in now have some sort of pots, but it’s all part of a whole condition, right? Yeah, yeah. So I stopped wanting to call it pots. I just want to call it dysautonomia. And dysautonomia with chronic fatigue, dysautonomia with fibromyalgia, dystaumia with digestive problems with your stomach problems, breathing problems with anxiety and depression. So we’re looking at your whole body and your nervous system not functioning properly. So that when we get that, you know, we got to start asking us some other questions, right? So one of the questions that we ask is if you’ve been screened cardiovascularly, so you’re can. 

01:43
Dr. Joseph Schneider
You can have cardiovascular issues that are causing you to have this postural orthostatic tension syndrome. So if you have cardiovascular problems, you need to get screened and you need to take a look at it from that perspective. Because if God forbid, you have anything problem with your heart, your valves, the regulation right of your heart, then it needs to be definitely work with. With a good cardiologist. But if you’ve been cleared by a cardiologist and they’ve given you medication, right? Baby blockers, the most common one, and then if they’ve given you do exercise, hydrate properly, electrolytes, and you’re still having this whole set of pot symptoms, plus your comorbidities of chronic fatigue, of fibromyalgia, of digestive complaints. And the list can go on and on. Like sometimes when on calls with people, I’m just like, this is what you feel every day. 

02:52
Dr. Joseph Schneider
They feel this way every day. It’s just taking their life away. And it’s not just an elderly person. It’s people in their 50s, people 40s, but mostly 30s and 20s, and now even teens that were dealing with this. Okay, so the one aspect of it that becomes abundantly clear when we’re looking at postural orthostatic Tension plus the comorbidities is that where’s the inflammation in the body that’s causing this? Could be inflammation in the brain itself. The blood, brain barrier, the brain stem, the cortex, the subcortex. There’s areas of the brain that have been inflamed. And it could be toxins. Right? Toxins are one of those causes, and it could be pathogens. So Covid is one of the pathogens. Lyme spawn the pathogens. What else we got? Epstein Barr, Cytomegalovirus. So we have many different types of stimuluses in. 

04:00
Dr. Joseph Schneider
In the body that causes you to have neuroinflammation. So neuroinflammation causes a loss of interconnections, and it causes or inflammation, the axons. The axons are the connectors in the brain, and it causes problems with the neurons and causes neuronal death. That doesn’t sound so good, right? That normal death. So neuroinflammation is really something that you have to look at and get a handle on and know where the causes are. So it could be trauma. And then you talk about trauma. Is it a physical trauma, or is it a mental, emotional trauma, or is it a combination of all the above? Or could it be a neurodevelopmental issue like kids that have had autism or ADHD or Asperger’s disease? Or could it be a strep infection for pan and Pandas? 

05:03
Dr. Joseph Schneider
There’s just so many things that causes neuroinflammation, and so the manifestation of that is a loss of proper controls. Now, you know, the function of the brain is the master control system of the body. It controls everything, right? Correct. Correct. Yeah. So when we get stroke patients, it’s not only all about the paralysis. It could be about their cognitive function, where they can’t speak right anymore, they can’t understand things, could affect their memory where their memory is not functioning right. So with pots, those physical manifestations are also manifestation of brain function, where we’re seeing brain fog, loss of memory, emotional issues like anxiety and depression. So the purpose of the Hope Brain and Body Recovery center is to identify that neuroinflammation and what has been the cause of it coming in. And. And then help to decrease the inflammation. 

06:17
Dr. Joseph Schneider
But then once the inflammation is decreasing, we want to rehab the brain. We want to rehab the brain and cause plasticity. And so it’s necessary to have all the equipment that’s necessary in the office to properly bring the brain back. Because if you lower the inflammation, but you don’t rebuild from the destructive processes that have gone on from the inflammation, then a patient is not going to get their life back. 

06:52
Joseph Quirk
Absolutely. And let’s go back to that, you know, because we are living in such trying times where inflammation is so present in nearly everybody. It seems like everything is almost out to get us at this point. You know, foods super processed, anything like IGG related, you could have sensitivities to that. Mycotoxins, you know, different types of molds, different types of environmental toxins that we’re dealing with. COVID you know, even just contracting and having the COVID virus is something that can cause that cytokine storm within you. And, you know, not only is it very neurologically damaging, but through time it becomes autonomically damaging and vestibularly, and it can really start to take out multiple systems. 

07:40
Joseph Quirk
So being able to find out what’s wrong in each one of those regions due to that initial neuroinflammation or scans show directly kind of where that’s correlated, and we’re able to dial right into that specific region and really start to rehab the brain properly. Plasticizing. 

07:59
Dr. Joseph Schneider
Yes. So, you know, he’s definitely right. But Covid has been a big factor that has increased the rate of POTS diagnoses, especially in young women. And if you think about your autonomic nervous system, it does control your heart rate, draws your blood pressure, controls your breathing, but it also has many other functions. It’s. The urinary system is controlled by your autonomics, your bowels, your intestines and your bowels are. That whole system is controlled by your autonomic nervous system. Women’s female cycles are controlled by the autonomic nervous system. So, I mean, we’ve got a lot of controls and we even have controls for circulation into your legs so that when you stand up, you actually can contract your arteries and your veins to control that circulation. And so it can go back to many different things. So this morning we had a patient from Arkansas. 

09:12
Dr. Joseph Schneider
And so, I mean, I never thought I’d be getting patients from all over the country, but we’re getting people from all the country that are coming here for our specialties. And so from a vital scan, we saw that he does. He has very poor circulation into his lower extremity. And so these are the things that’s. 

09:31
Joseph Quirk
Shown where in the brachial. Through the test results. On the brachial? 

09:34
Dr. Joseph Schneider
Yeah, for the brachial. The test results with it, you get so much information. Right. So when we do a full diagnostics, we’re getting a tremendous amount of information on each person, how they function. We can even get your aerobic capacities, your anaerobic capacities and so forth. And we’re going to use that information to develop programs that actually can rehabilitate those areas. We don’t want to patch you up, we want to fix you. Yeah. All right. And so it’s a long term plan that has responsibilities on your end and also responsibilities on our end to keep up with you to see if that those life impact areas, your work, your recreational activities, your relationships, your hobbies, they’re all things that are really important to make a full life, give you quality. Right. So you like skiing? Love it. 

10:39
Joseph Quirk
Snowboarding? Both really. 

10:41
Dr. Joseph Schneider
Right. You know, so if you have active issues. Right. You can’t enjoy your life. Right. You gotta back off now. You know, I have had strokes and I mean, I like to ride my bike for 30 to 50 miles. I liked going out and taking a run. I like going for long swims. I like boating. I like water skiing, I like snow skiing and everything. I was pretty active today. I don’t have those capabilities that I had before. I’m happy I’m alive, I’m happy I’m here. And so the purpose of our podcast is to give you enough information so that you can make good decisions about your continued care and bringing your life back. 

11:27
Joseph Quirk
Yeah, that’s really what it’s all about, you know, that’s right. At the end of the day, we just kind of want to provide the information that, you know, we’ve spent a lot of time learning and continuing to learn every day from it. Just because it is such a mixed bag of things. It’s really, it’s really sad and fascinating how different every individual case is, you know, because one might be dealing with syncope or dealing with multiple systems atrophying, whereas somebody might just come in and they just have a high heart rate and. 

12:04
Dr. Joseph Schneider
Been big also. Yep, absolutely. Yeah. So this is our first podcast, our inaugural podcast. And it’s. They’re going to be not hours long. They’re going to be 20 minutes, maybe go into 30 minutes. But we’re happy to be here and we’re happy to provide this service and hopefully we can changed a lot more lives than we’re changing now. Thanks, Joey. 

12:34
Joseph Quirk
Yeah, thanks. 

12:38
Dr. Joseph Schneider
Thank you for joining us on my POTS podcast. If you’re looking for more support, Visit us at hopeframecenter.com or follow our journey on TikTok where we share daily insights and inspiration. Remember, healing is possible. I’m living proof. I’m Dr. Joseph Schneider, and I’ll see you next time as we continue exploring paths to recovery.