🎯 How topics get chosen
Topics come from what people are actually searching for and asking about — the questions that come up repeatedly in the POTS, MCAS, hEDS and dysautonomia communities, and the gaps where the existing answers are thin, contradictory or written for clinicians rather than patients.
We don't publish on a topic simply because it gets traffic. If we can't add something a reader can't already get elsewhere, we'd rather improve an existing guide than add another page saying the same thing.
🔬 How we research
Every guide starts from published sources, and those sources are named and linked at the foot of the article so you can check us rather than take our word for it.
Where we look first: clinical bodies, national health services and established patient organisations — Dysautonomia International, Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, NICE, the NHS, the Ehlers-Danlos Society, Anaphylaxis UK, ASCIA, the Resuscitation Council UK, the Job Accommodation Network, Acas, and peer-reviewed literature where it exists.
What we avoid: claims that trace back only to blogs, supplement retailers or social media, however widely repeated. If we can't find a source we'd be comfortable linking to, the claim doesn't go in.
Numbers get named. Where an article gives a figure — a percentage, a threshold, a timeframe — the source for it is in the reference list. If we can't attribute a number, we take it out rather than round it into vagueness.
✍️ How we write
Everything is written to be read on a bad day. That drives more of our decisions than any style guide would:
Short sentences, no unexplained jargon. Clinical terms are used where they're the right word, and defined the first time.
Structured for skimming. You should be able to find one answer without reading the whole article, because often that's all the energy there is.
Function over feelings. "Can't stand long enough to cook a meal" is more useful than "dizzy", both for you and for the clinician you'll repeat it to.
Uncertainty stays visible. Where evidence is genuinely mixed, we say so instead of picking the tidier answer.
🩺 Medical review
Articles carrying a "Medically reviewed by" line have been read by a qualified physician before publication. Our reviewer is Disha Arora, MD (Pathology), MPH, whose credentials and remit are set out on her own page.
The brief is specific: factual accuracy, safety framing, clinically important omissions, and scope discipline. Style and search optimisation are outside it.
Credentials are shown in the internationally recognised form, with the underlying register entry published in full on the reviewer's own page — qualification by qualification, with the awarding body and year. Anyone can check the public record against what we've written, and where a qualification carries a different name in another country, we explain the equivalence rather than leave it unsaid.
📌 Our rule on review comments
Every comment is applied, or the article does not carry the reviewer's name. If we'd rather not make a change she asks for, the credit line comes off — not the correction. A review that changes nothing would be worth very little, and a credit that survives a declined correction would be worth less than nothing.
Not every article is reviewed. Reviews are commissioned, they cost money, and they're prioritised by risk — guides touching emergencies, medication, testing and anything where a misreading could delay care go first. Articles that haven't been reviewed don't carry the line.
🚫 What we will never publish
Diagnosis, or tools for self-diagnosis. Our checklists exist to help you describe what's happening to a clinician, never to replace one. Ticking boxes on a symptom list tells you that you have something worth discussing — nothing more.
Dosing, medication advice or supplement protocols. No amounts, no schedules, no "what to take". Those decisions belong with the person who prescribes for you, and our printables are built so they can't be mistaken for a dosing schedule.
Cures, protocols or recovery timelines. These conditions don't have them, and anyone promising one is selling something.
Advice to stop, start or change a treatment. Where an article discusses a medication effect, it says to record it and report it — never to experiment by stopping.
Content built on someone else's crisis. No fear-driven copy, no engineered urgency, no before-and-after stories.
⚠️ Safety conventions we keep
Some editorial choices exist purely for safety, and they're deliberate rather than accidental:
Emergency symptoms never appear in ordinary symptom checklists. Chest pain, breathlessness at rest and fainting appear only in "seek help now" boxes, so they can't be normalised as items to tick.
Any guide dealing with a reaction, a flare or a test carries an explicit line about when not to wait for an appointment.
Where a test is discussed, we say plainly that testing must never delay treatment and that a normal result doesn't rule a condition out.
🔄 Updates and corrections
Health guidance changes, and pages published a year ago can quietly go out of date. Articles are revised when guidance changes, when a reviewer flags something, or when a reader tells us we're wrong.
If you spot an error, tell us. Reply to any of our emails and it reaches us. We'd rather correct something quickly than defend it — and if a clinician tells us we've got something wrong, we change it and say so.
💷 Money, and how it doesn't affect what we publish
Most of what we make is free. We also sell one paid printable product, The Spoonie Planner, and that is the entire commercial model. There is no advertising on this site, no sponsored content, and no affiliate links in our guides.
Nothing we publish is written to sell that product. If a free printable does the job, our own emails say so and tell you to ignore the paid one.
We never sell, rent or share email addresses. You get what you asked for and you can leave in one click.
Start with a free printable
Trackers, checklists and templates built for POTS, MCAS, hEDS and dysautonomia — undated, in A4 and US Letter, designed to be filled in on a bad day.