does anyone have something like this happening?

since my severe symptoms of pots started on 2/14/08, i maintained my weight level even though i wasn't active at ALL. I might have slightly gone up a couple pounds, but nothing noticeable.

then the past week, i have gained 5 - 10 pounds, depending on when i weigh myself. like between friday night and saturday night, i gained 5 pounts but between last night and this morning i lost 4 pounds. but my weight is consistently increasing this past week.

which is bizarre because i have been more active this past week so why would it go up rather than stay flat.

i take atenolol which has a potential side effect of weight gain - but i've been taking it for 2 months and the weight gain only started the past week.

and it is frustrating because i'm active and exercising (water) and physical therapy for my shoulder - but yet i'm gaining weight????

then i was wondering if my body maybe is doing better because i have more weight so it has more fluid retention???

btw - i don't take salt pills or add much salt. but i do drink tons of water.

any ideas?

WMB..My md told me I could either gain wt or lose it. It seems to be a problem when I have a POTS attack. One week I was 13# more last than the week before. I got it with water gain.---3# per gallon. That is when stay off all salt and just drink water. He gave me Lasix, and I was still retaining water, he put me on thyroid and just put me on a second thyroid. I am now some better, but not fixed. I ended up in the hosp about a month ago from O2, probably from being out and about so much. I was already sleeping with a CPAP and O2, but my weight gain is back, sore neck, were all going strong.I'll keep looking on this forum to see if anyone has an answer.

I always gain some weight when I exercise especially after a long period of little activity since I am gaining muscle and (hopefully) losing fat and muscle weighs more. I don't know why your number are so chaotic but I would suggest you try weighing yourself just once a week and try to do it at the same time of day wearing the same clothes (or like me, buck naked in the am after my first BM ;-)). Also are you using a digital scale? They are highly unreliable I've found so I invested in a balance scale quite some time ago.
I find the best indicator of whether or not I'm getting fitter or trimmer is how my clothes fit. The numbers on the scale can reflect so many variables but if I can't button my pants then it's pretty obvious that I'm getting bigger.

Since January I've put on a lot of weight but I don't weigh myself. I can become obsessed with numbers on a scale. As in an above post we can tell how much weight we've lost or gained by our clothes.

My weight gain was caused by HRT and an anti-histamine I take. Although I've stopped the HRT I haven't lost any of the weight I've gained -- I think the anti-histamine is a weight gaining med plus it makes me hungry (I found that info on the net).

As was also already posted, if you are exercising, you are developing muscles and muscle weighs more than fat but takes up less space. So you might weigh a bit more but in fact be smaller in inches.

Weight fluctuates in the average person. Although if you continue to gain and gain rapidly you should check this out with your doc. Actually any new symptom should be checked with a doc just to be sure it's not serious.

I dont weigh myself very often but over the last 2 years (since I got POTs) I have prob put on about 14 pounds!My specialist says he believes its something to do with water retention!

YES! I gained an unexplainable 2o lbs in 2 weeks. I used to eat ben and jerry's every night to stay around 100. 20 % of my body weight and no doctors do anyrhing, I am losing my looks, and my best feature, my brain...all I had left. My self esteem is, for once, just pathetic. I DO have the Vit D deficiency, super severe. Apparently, it can cause obesity. Get ur D tested. It causes similar problems to POTS.. Lack of vit D is a very big problem now and for ur future. snd it causes depression and weakend cognitive functioning. I also have related high PTH.

Anyway, can anyone tell us what to do about the weight. I am STARVING. Pots costs a fortune. I just want something tangible of myself back. Anyone REALLY know how to treat this? Does mega doses of vit D bring down the weight. I feel I am having triplets.any advice. Please help.

The weight gain nightmare most definitely happens to me. The worst occasion I remember is 18 pounds in a day. I wish I were kidding. I also wish I knew the answers. I had a doctor tell me it was a mild form of Cushing's, and prescribe diuretics. That was before the dys dx. Since then I've been afraid to take it, as it's contraindicated with the constant need to put in water.

I can tell you that the weight is clearly swelling on me. Sometimes, it looks like my hands and feet are latex gloves that someone tied off and blew up like balloons. I also get water retention around my middle. It looks awful.

I take thyroid meds, I test low routinely anyway. No one seems to know how to balance that. I'm also always frozen and fatigued when I'm swollen.

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeease if you find some answers, let us all know.

Neshema - I also have vit D deficiencies and take 50,000 units a week.

In my water aerobics class, there is a lady who also takes atenolol (for other reasons) and she also had weight gain.

I wonder if our bodies do better with more weight because they need more fluid? So our bodies are trying to protect or improve themselves by making us gain weight?

I did feel better when I was heavier. I definitely didn't have as much fatigue and brain fog. I had different stuff though: I didn't faint much, but I had a constant migraine for a year and a half.

I always sort of laugh to myself when people go on and on about how good I look and ask what diet I was on. The weight disappeared about a year ago now. I have no clue why it came or why it went.

Ultimately, I put on about 70 pounds in the course of about 2 months, carried it around for about 3 years, then it just started going away one day. It was gone in about 4 months. I didn't change my diet or exercise habits either time.

I can't control it, so I guess I try not to think too much about whether I was better off the other way, especially as it was such an emotional strain, the way people treat you when they don't like how you look. It's especially difficult as a fitness professional.

I've been battling the same weight issue. Three years ago, I was 116 lbs. and fought to keep that on. Now I'm at 148 and barely eating anything. Even though I have POTS, my PCP will occasionally put me on Lasix and it helps. When I'm bloated from fluid, it causes tachycardia. The Lasix has actually helped keep my blood pressure down and the tachycardia under control. I've taken 50,000 units of Vit. D twice and it had no affect on my weight. I start Human Growth Hormone injections next week. I think that the dysautonomia has our hormone levels so screwed up that our bodies don't know what to do. No one would believe these weight fluctuations but they're very real. I'm on cortef to help with adrenals but it made my estrogen level drop too low which probably contributes to weight gain. My human growth hormone is too low and doesn't respond properly to low glucose levels. I'm sure that contributes as well to the weight gain. My estradiol level surged to 501 one week and within two weeks dropped to 76. These types of fluctuations are going to affect our metabolisms greatly. When my estradiol levels were fluctuating, my pant size went from 10 to a 14 within that two week period. I avoid my bathroom scale as much as possible.

Wow wow wow, Deb, it sounds like you've been in a very similar place.

What type of doc do you see who's had the forsight to look at estradiol and HGH? My vitamin D levels have never even been checked, to my knowledge. Who'd you find that was even interested in this kind of stuff?

An endocrinologist. If you're not eating and you're gaining weight - it's gotta be either metabolic or hormonal. It was happening too quickly so I asked my boss who happens to be a doctor in my plan if I could check my TSH three times in a week which no one does. It's normal for fluctuations in your hormone levels but not like what I saw. He agreed to check them for me and I was indeed going from hyperthyroid to hypothyroid within days. The docs had never seen such fluctations so they agreed to recheck (only because I had the levels right in front of them). Again they saw the fluctuations. I then asked my boss to check other hormone levels, i.e. estradiol, FSH,LH, etc. All of them were all over the place (extreme highs and lows within a very short period of time). That's why a lot of us are feeling so poorly and our metabolisms are screwed up.

check my FOR QUESTIONS IN RE post. it offers a connection. hope it helps.

Bubbleboy,

I couldn't find the post you mention through the search mode. Would you know what time frame it was posted in?

Thanks,
Yogaluver

This is the post Bubbleboy is refers to:

http://ndrf.org/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2621035343/m/7851053355