Fainting and Fatigue
Question: I had polio with weakness in my left leg. I recovered and carried on a normal life until the early 1990's when I started to have fatigue, heart palpitations, skipped beats and low blood pressure, especially after I eat. Should my doctor be considering any tie-in with polio?
Dr. Bruno’s Response: Oh, yes! More than fifty years ago polio pioneer David Bodian discovered that every polio survivor had some poliovirus-damaged to neurons in the brain stem, the so-called "bulb" of the brain. When brain stem damage was severe "bulbar" polio was diagnosed. The iron lung, was needed when brain stem breathing-control neurons stopped working. But the most common symptom of "bulbar" polio was trouble swallowing, not trouble breathing. And some "bulbar" polio patients had severe difficulty controlling their blood pressure and heart rate which was the leading cause of death in these patients, not being unable to breathe.
The relationship between fatigue, brain stem damage and low blood pressure links polio survivors to another bunch of very tired folk: those with chronic fatigue syndrome. Please read the article:
Fainting and Fatigue: Causation or Coincidence. You can find it (along with other articles of this subject) in the Encyclopedia of Polio and PPS. Look in the Index under the topic of “Fatigue”.