Swelling of the Nail Beds
Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional. I can only speak to my own experience and hope that gives you some insight into what POTS is and how it can affect you or the people around you.
Swelling of the Nail Beds Feels like: Pressure building up in the nails, dull to sharp pains under each nail.
This is honestly one of the stranger problems I have. Every now and then with no discernible reason (see a theme here?) my nail beds swell. My doctors have estimated that this is due to an over correction of poor circulation or possible autoimmune attack. Either my body is attacking its nail beds or my blood stream that don’t work is suddenly up and at it too much. Either way it just results in pain.
I remember the first time this happened I was doing homework on the couch with my mom behind me. I had been putting it off for a while and she finally made me do it and then I was like “I can’t, my fingers hurt too much”. She was like “Oh shut up and do your work” and then I showed her my fingers which were all white and red when pressed on and she just went “shit” and called the doctor.
This happens more frequently than you would think. I would say this is one of the more frequent of my strange/ smaller medical problems. As far as I can tell there is no real damage to my nails, just some lines/indents from where it happens but it grows out pretty quickly. My doctors are not too concerned about it so I normally just ignore it until it goes away.
It is not too painful unless I also jam my finger or stub my toes while it is happening. I find that the swelling of the nail beds happen more in hot in cold. I do think it is related to heat changes. For example when I grab ice or clean off my car from snow it seems to happen later once my fingers have warmed up.
Solutions I’ve Found
I haven’t found that anything really helps it resolve faster. It normally doesn’t last more than 24 hours and normally other parts of my body hurt more so I don’t focus on it too much. Yeah so that’s my advice on this one, ignore it until it goes away.
Further Reading
I sadly couldn’t find any reading on this. If you know of any please comment below.
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