Bendy Wendy! Hypermobility & me

Ignorance is rarely bliss!

When I was younger I was never brilliant at sport. I didn’t seem very good with activities that demanded whole body movement coordination, although interestingly I was pretty good at squash (an over-bendy wrist may have been helpful?!). Instead I opted for horseback riding and then later hit the gym.

I didn’t notice my legs bending backwards unusually far, and my caring mum chose not to point it out. However she did worry about how much my shoulder was down on one side compared to the other from carrying my school bag full of books - it was so ‘not cool’ to have a backpack actually on my back!

It wasn’t until my early 20s when someone with slightly less tact noticed my leg position and pointed it out. I had no idea about my strange flamingo-like legs! This was the start of my journey to awareness...but I really had no idea why my legs were like that, nor how it would affect my life.

With hindsight I realise now I’ve also always had small episodes of dizziness, particularly when getting up quickly off the ground which is not unusual for those with hypermobility. We have a family history of low blood pressure which I thought was the cause, but I also now know that the dizziness can be attributable to hypermobility due to laxity even in the veins!

My story of having a 'bendy body'

I only learned that I was hypermobile and what it really meant to me in my 40s. I always liked to exercise to be fit and for good mental health. In my 20s I was a regular gym visitor joining lots of types of classes.

Then, in my early 30s, I was pregnant multiple times and carried and birthed three babies, meaning a huge load on all the joints, particularly around the middle area of my body. The pelvis is one of the key areas of the body that needs to function well for us to sit comfortably and more importantly to ‘locomote’, i.e. to walk and to run.

One tell-tale sign of the instability in my body was that in my first pregnancy I found myself having ‘SPD’ or ‘Symphysis Pubis Dysfunction’ which is a very painful disorder that happens when the ligament at the front of the pelvis is basically struggling to hold on given the pressures above it and increased by the hormonal fluctuations of pregnancy. It was at times excruciating.

I was lucky I didn’t have it so badly as to be offered crutches and for me it actually decreased each time I was pregnant which is often not the case for those who have the condition more severely. This was a big indicator that I had instability, but unfortunately there is very little that can be done in terms of treatment, instead only support.

Upping the challenge on an unstable foundation

It wasn’t until after having my third (and final!) son, and getting into running as a way of fitting in chunks of more intense exercise around looking after my three young boys, that I really started to become unstuck.

The force of running I’ve been told is from 3 to 8 times load on the joints. Whether this is accurate or not I don’t know, however I do know that it certainly feels like that and therefore a stable foundation is an absolute must. I now know that was not the case for me at all!

I kept running because I genuinely became addicted to it. I loved being outdoors; in the fresh air away from the madness of home, being in the countryside and I was definitely exhilarated by the endorphins that were released. I found it mindful and I found it helped to lift my mood no matter what level my mood was before I went out. BUT, I ignored signs from my body that things weren’t right, worsening pain that was never fixed by physios.

I was stopped in my running tracks one night in December 2014, waking up to not able to walk with such significant pain from my back down my legs. I thought I’d be ‘fixed’ in a matter of months, but instead I only started to really feel like I was getting back to (my!) ‘normal’ after a 4 year journey through chronic pain, frustration and fear.

Learning for me and for you

I realised after a couple of years that I actually had to ‘fix’ myself. Through huge amounts of investigation and research and going to various different therapists, I found out that I was hypermobile and that the key to my issue was that I needed to learn about safe, healthy ranges of motion and be stronger to make up for the over-laxity of my tissues and especially ligaments.

However, first I needed to be aligned to be well. I had pelvic correction (and still do at least annually) and with hormonal fluctuations still occurring I’m now far more aware that twice a month I need to be very careful with my movements. The lack of these fluctuations will be one blessing of being menopausal that I am actually look forward to!

What is Joint Hypermobility Syndrome?

Hypermobility can be checked for by using the ‘Beighton’ scoring method which entails looking at the angle various joints we see can extend. However hypermobility can affect any of the joints in your body, but not necessarily all the joints and not necessarily all to the same degree, which makes it a spectrum disorder.

Hypermobility is prevalent in more of the population than people realise (potentially around 15/20%*) and has ramifications for health far beyond the stability of joints alone. Many of the additional symptoms* remain lesser known, such as gut issues like IBS and constipation, acid reflux, higher rates of anxiety, fatigue, insomnia, prolapse varicose veins and more. If you have any of these, it doesn’t mean you are hypermobile, but it’s interesting when you find out that you are to look at the list and realise whether some other things have also affected your life that you didn’t realise were perhaps a by-product of the condition. It is often a condition that can be misdiagnosed because hypermobility is a fairly silent but sometimes aggressive condition. Annoyingly, we are born with it and that cannot be changed.

I do not have a medical background, so this is my learning only from my own research and therefore may not be completely accurate, but I hope it at least helps to spark thoughts for you to investigate further for yourself.

Simply put, hypermobility is a disruption in the collagen that is in all our cells. The collagen is more stretchy, which we can see in the ‘over-flexibility’ of our muscles. The bodies of those with hypermobility can seem enviably flexible compared to those who have less range of motion. However the problem with this arises when the ligaments, which are the stiffer joining vehicles between bone and muscle that help us to put on the brakes in our range of motion, are also more lax. This means the range of movement is excessive and muscles have to work extra hard to hold the skeleton in good alignment. In my case I then added in the extra force of running (after going through 5 years of pregnancies and births) which meant my muscles could no longer do the work where my ligaments were under-performing and I finally had red flags everywhere!

Part of the issue is that the nervous system is unclear about where the joint range of motion should end. I have always found that holding positions (such as in yoga) was one of the things that would cause me huge flare ups. If we can go past the healthy end range, we are putting our tissues under immense pressure and strain to ensure joints don’t dislocate.

Our bodies learn patterns of movement and alignment by what we do and the shapes we make with our bodies most regularly. So as a hypermobile person we have to be very good about learning where a healthy range of motion is for our joints, so that we can teach the body good movement patterns and teach the nervous system where it should stop, whilst at the same time working on our strength to hold the skeleton in the right position during movement.

To read more about hypermobility, this is a great site full of resources:

https://www.hypermobility.org/what-are-hypermobility-syndromes

Mobility is key

A quick definition, as this word is often misused, is that ‘mobility’ is the ability to move our bodies with control, i.e. it’s both the strength and flexibility of a joint and its surrounding tissues. Good mobility is a healthy range of motion that keeps the joint safe, with muscles that are strong through their entire range and then ligaments applying the brakes at the right time.

The basics of natural movement coaching are all about using ground movements, the foundation of good upright movement, to improve mobility. Natural movement became my go to movement method after I had worked hard on restorative movements, that helped bring me improved mobility and strength. The result was to be able to go back to an active lifestyle, as I had before, but now knowing the activities that are nourishing for my type of body and those that aren’t.

Where I’m at now!

I’m very lucky that I didn’t have a structural issue (although to this day I am sure, had I been allowed a scan at the beginning, I would have certainly had a slipped disc or similar). It was questioned why I was in pain at all and often made to feel a fraud, or that I was making up my pain. When your ‘parts’ are mis-aligned as mine were, and your muscles and ligaments are not strong enough, repetitive bad positioning of the body and the addition of extra force can lead to extreme pain that becomes chronic for me, for 4 years.

7 years later I am now pain-free in the main, but do have occasional issues with joints that I try to respond to immediately. I also have MOTs with my neuro-muscular therapist. I know that running is not something my body enjoys (even if my mind misses it), but I am now an avid walker to get my outside time and I love to add natural movement breaks as I go, balancing on tree trunks, climbing trees and hanging from them - all things it would never have occurred to me to do before I found natural movement training!

I am able to weight train, swim, bike ride, jump (occasionally), run when needed or to play games, kayak, paddleboard and dance! When I was in pain, I was scared that regardless of never being able to do many of these types of things again, I would be in pain forever and have reduced mobility for life. Every day I am so glad that isn’t the case and the reason I decided to teach natural movement was hugely to try and help others move better and move more to avoid this situation happening to anyone else.

Having good mobility and strength are essential to ageing well and the movements to get there can be adopted throughout the day as well as in training sessions and I try to inspire this priority to healthy daily movement for all.

If you realise from reading this that you too may have some hypermobility, I would be very happy to talk to you about how to find specialist help or to discuss your current movement habits to help live with hypermobility.

Wendy x

*Facts taken from a great book: although designed by yoga teachers, the book, ‘Too Flexible To Feel Good: A Practical Roadmap to Managing Hypermobility’ by Celest Pereira & Adell Bridges is a great breakdown of the condition and has lots of information about how to see your hypermobile body and its movements.

I found them on their page @hypermobile.yogis on Instagram.

P.S. An important note: EDS - Ehlers Danlos Syndrome

This is the name for those who unfortunately find themselves with the most difficult symptoms of hypermobility and much more. This is a far worse condition than hypermobility and for anyone who would like to read more, this is a great place to start: https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/what-is-eds/