What exactly is Dysautonomia?

Dysautonomia is an umbrella term for disorders of the autonomic nervous system. In other words, all of the "automatic" functions of the body that we don't think about, like breathing, heart rate, blood pressure, metabolism, digestion, kidney function, and temperature control, aren't automatically regulated like they should be.

These conditions dramatically alter the lives of those of us who live with these illnesses. Hopes and dreams feel out of reach. Guilt is an everyday emotion, feeling like you're weak, lazy, and a burden. And then you add on the fact that these illnesses are invisible and people, let alone doctors, don't know much about them, which makes it that much more lonely. It will forever boggle my mind that something that affects more than 70 million people worldwide is still so under diagnosed and severely misunderstood.