Dizziness

Why do I feel dizzy when I stand up

Standing up too fast and feeling the room tilt, sometimes with a pounding heartbeat, is common enough to have a name most people already know: getting up too quickly, low blood pressure, needing more water or salt.

Those explanations are worth ruling out first, and simple fixes like standing up slower or staying hydrated genuinely help a lot of people.

The Hypermobility Link Behind Standing Dizziness (POTS)

We're not doctors, and this isn't a diagnosis. It's what the research says about a documented overlap that's easy to miss: hypermobility and orthostatic intolerance, including POTS. Miller et al. (2020) examined 91 POTS patients and found that 28 of them, 31%, met the clinical criteria for hEDS.

There's also evidence for a specific mechanism and a specific intervention. A randomized controlled trial by Bourne et al. (JACC, 2021, n=30) tested compression garments during tilt-table testing, which simulates the drop in blood pressure and rise in heart rate that happens on standing. Heart rate during the tilt averaged 109±19 bpm with no compression versus 92±14 bpm with full abdominal and lower-body compression, a statistically significant difference (p<0.001). That's a meaningful reduction in orthostatic tachycardia, and it points to blood pooling in the lower body and abdomen as a real part of what's happening.

What to bring to a doctor

If standing up reliably brings on dizziness or a racing heart, a doctor can check for orthostatic intolerance with a simple standing test or a tilt-table study, and that's worth pursuing alongside any joint hypermobility history. Our POTS-Adjacent Dizziness and Orthostatic Intolerance page covers the fuller picture, including what compression garments and other management approaches the research has looked at.

Sources referenced on this page

01Bourne et al., JACC 2021, compression and orthostatic tachycardia (n=30) (link not yet sourced)
02Miller et al. 2020, hEDS criteria in POTS patients (n=91) (link not yet sourced)