What is Dysautonomia?
Dysautonomia is an umbrella term referring to a group of several medical conditions that cause a malfunction of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). This is the part of the nervous system that controls automatic processes or the things that your body does without you having to think about them, such as heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, dilation, and constriction of the pupils of the eye, kidney function, and temperature control. Dysautonomia can be acute and reversible, as in Guillain-Barre syndrome, or non-reversable, chronic and progressive.
The autonomic nervous system is extensive, traveling from your brain to the spinal cord and finally–by way of the tenth cranial nerve / vagus nerve, and small fiber autonomic nerves– out to every organ, gland, and blood vessel in your body. It should be noted that oral, head and neck cancer patients that receive radiation as part of their treatments, can have varying degr