Are you double jointed or hypermobile?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm curious about the possible connection between autism and connective tissue disorders which are known to cause hypermobility, hypersensitivities, social difficulties etc.

I am the most hypermobile person I ever met, also have aspergers traits, others in my family also seem to have both or neither, but not just one.

Do you have both?

I'm mildly hypermobile. My hands and fingers bend backward easily, and when I was younger I used to sprain my ankles on a regular basis because they just bent too far, and so the joints were unstable.

The more exercise you get with hypermobile joints, the more you strengthen the muscles, the more stable the joints get. I do a lot of walking as an adult, and I've only sprained my ankle three times in the past five years. When I was a kid I was nearly constantly in ankle braces.

On the Breighton scale, the only way I'm hypermobile is bending both my thumbs back to my forearms. I also have really stretchy skin, but my skin looks good and youthful and wounds heal easily.

EDIT: My mum also has both traits, but not my dad.

I was told I had a connective tissue disorder by an orthopedist when I was a kid (and quit gymnastics after multiple injuries). I was never told which kind and no tests were ever run, so I just call myself simply hypermobile.

I score a 9 on the beighton scale.

Beighton scale criteria for anyone who wants to play at home.

I'm sorry you had to quit gymnastics.

I just realized that you have a witty screen name

Have a lovely day.

Oh! And it doesn't greatly impact my life. I have a set of braces for each ankle, knee, and wrist. Whenever one feels weak (feels like it's "falling apart") or gets injured slightly, I put the appropriate brace on. I typically wear it for only a few hours to (at most) a few days. I hide them when I do wear them or take the wrist brace off temporarily when I go out to avoid answering questions about my "injury".

Also, the labor with my daughter was an hour and 15 minutes (only about 20 of which I was *sure* I was, in fact, in labor). I had always blamed hypermobility for that.

As Callista mentioned, exercise is very important for hypermobile joints. Your muscles need to do the work of lax connective tissue. (So relaxation is also very important.) A hypermobile person really needs to be very physically fit. But if they are, there really isn't any (or many) problems.

Also, I can touch the tip of my nose with my tongue and move my tongue behind my uvula and up into my nasopharynx, something I do habitually to clear out the mucus up there.

Not as many people as I expected, but I wouldn't agree that hypermobility doesn't cause problems. When I dislocated joints as a child I didn't mind at all, minor inconvenience compared to anyone else who dislocated, they were injured by it, I wasn't.

Now I have early arthritis in joints that I DIDN'T KNOW were dislocating, so they were working outside the normal position where there wasn't the cartilage coating on one of the surfaces, which caused the bone and cartilage to wear away. On top of that all my joints are becoming more unstable as I get older, not just the few that used to dislocate, its very painful when they go wrong, tearing the nearby ligaments or nipping the nerves.

I wondered if the connective tissue of the brain/nervous system could contribute to autism if it is faulty, as so much connective tissue is faulty in most hypermobile folks, but I guess there are fewer women on here and men don't get the same problems with hypermobility.

How old are you? When did arthritis start?

I technically have osteoarthritis in my jaw (diagnosed when I was ~25). It used to hurt a lot, but hasn't in years. I don't know why it stopped. I don't have arthritis anywhere else.

I'm not hypermobile. Because of a shoulder injury, I'm the opposite, actually.

Mildly but so is my mom and few other people in my family.

I'm double jointed in the elbows and double socketed on the shoulders. I'm also more flexible than average I think. I can also lick my elbow!

People are often quite amazed at how flexible I am, though I've never thought it to be all that unusual. I often sit with my legs crossed right underneath me, and somehow this manages to amaze people. I can also touch my shoulders with my feet. I guess I could be considered mildly hypermobile.

When I was a child I could bend my arms so that my elbows kind of bent inside out beyond normal range, but I don't know if that's just because all childrens' connective tissues are supple. (Can't do it now).

I also used to deliberately displace my hips because I discovered they could sort of "move out of place" and it amused me.

I've now had horrible issues with pain in my hips since about 17 onward throughout the rest of my life, and I attribute it to that silly trick I did so frequently.

.

My thumbs, wrists, knees and neck have confirmed osteoarthritis and I suspect my hips and ankles too, in my thirties which is early as far as I'm concerned for such widespread problems!

Even things like the feeling of my elbows pulling out of their sockets if I carry bags with my arms straight down turns out to be accurate, after years of being disbelieved by doctors. I had three x-rays last year for arthritis, two of the three revealed partial dislocations at the time of x-ray, which I had been convinced were normal after a lifetime of being treated by doctors who clearly thought I must not know the meaning of the word dislocate every time I said I had dislocated this joint or another.

It hasn't been studied scientifically yet, but hypermobility in joints and skin and internal organs has been noted by various doctors to run in the same families and same individuals as autism, reading up on it is my current obsession, it could be a clue to at least one possible cause of autism, many soft tissues can be affected by collagen abnormalities, including the brain and the blood supply to it.

I am very mildly hypermobile. I did cause me some problems, but they used to be minor. Now I am 45 and they are not all that minor anymore. Walking is painful, and my elbows are often sore too. I'm worried that it will get worse. I'm trying to lose weight, because I gained a lot in a very short time when I was on antidepressants and that made things massively worse. It sucks.