You stand up from the couch and the room goes pale at the edges. Your heart takes off like you've just sprinted, except you haven't moved more than three feet. You sit back down. Someone has told you, more than once, that it's probably anxiety.

It isn't. When you stand, gravity pulls blood down into your legs and abdomen, and if your body doesn't pull it back up fast enough, your heart compensates by beating faster while your brain runs short. That's the whole mechanism, and everything in this book works on it directly.

POTS Daily Protocol is written for the days when reading is hard. It skips the jargon and hands you numbers, timings and sequences, three pillars you build in order, plus a one-page card for the days that fall apart.

What's inside:

1) A 10-minute Monday morning start, so you can begin the week with the protocol running before you've read another page

2) Sodium loading with actual numbers: how to work out your daily target from your weight and symptoms, how to spread it from morning to bedtime, and how salt tablets, salty food and electrolyte drinks compare on cost and speed

3) The salt-water shot, how to mix it, when to drink it, and why it works

4) Why chugging water fails, and the sip schedule that replaces it, timed around meals, showers and standing

5) Compression that actually helps: waist-high versus knee-high, the mmHg range to look for, when to put them on and take them off, and how to buy your first pair without overspending

6) A 6-week recumbent exercise progression, starting on the floor, from supine marches and leg lifts to seated-to-standing transitions, with heart-rate limits and red flags that mean stop

7) The shower protocol, plus pre-cooling for heat waves, seat choices for planes and cars, and a small cooling kit for your bag

8) Why a big carbohydrate lunch flattens your afternoon, and how to eat smaller and more often for steadier blood pressure

9) The Bad-Day Protocol: seven steps, emergency salt and fluid numbers, the legs-up 20-minute reset, and how to tell a normal flare from something that needs a call

10) Word-for-word scripts for your boss, your professor, and 504/IEP meetings, plus what to do if the request is denied

11) The home standing test and a one-page symptom log, so you arrive at appointments with data instead of adjectives

12) The boundary chapter: overlaps like hypermobility, MCAS and chronic fatigue, and the red flags worth pushing on

The three subtypes of POTS don't all respond the same way, so the book also shows you how to adjust the plan when your symptoms don't match the typical pattern, including managing sodium if you have high blood pressure or kidney concerns.

No cure is promised here. What you get is a system you can run on a bad day, and the words to explain it to everyone who's told you it's all in your head.

Grab your copy and start with Monday morning.