What is the link between joint hypermobility and anxiety? | Dr Jessica Eccles

Hi- do you any updates on this topic? Thank you

I had to hit pause, sit up, yell 'what?!!?' This is a life-changing discovery. As a person with hypermobility, anxiety, and inexplicable tachycardia I thank you for this!

Hypermobile here, with autism and adhd. For me I suspect a lot of the hypermobile anxiety/fight/flight component comes from the fact that our nervous systems are exhausted because it's constantly getting our muscles to do the supporting/stabilizing work that's supposed to be done by our joints. Even when laying down or sleeping our bodies can't fully relax or our skeletons would dislocate all night long, and that 24/7 muscle activation and work exhausts us, so we produce excess adrenaline during the day just to stay awake... which further tenses our muscles and compromises our deep sleep, and round and round we go for years and decades. So yeah, anxious and stressed in every possible sense.

I want to cry. This makes SO MUCH sense for me and my life experience. My mind is blown.

And some people say it's all in our head.. thank you so much for this

I cried watching this from beginning to end. You have no idea how much it means to be validated by this kind of research. Thank you so much for all your work.

I have hypermobility, fibromyalgia, anxiety, and depression. I've always, ALWAYS thought everything was connected. Thank you for doing this research. I would love to see options for natural healing rather than medications...

This is great iam hypermobile and have anxiety this was very informative thankyou

We're really glad that you find this helpful - we love sharing science that can impact people's lives direct from our researchers.

For me the anxiety comes from the fear of doing a physical activity that will lead to another dislocation that will not pop back in place without medical treatment. It's that I don't want to go back to hospital and maybe have to face surgery

I am Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos. I never thought of myself as predisposed to anxiety until I nearly bled to death and came down with full-blown POTS. An entire lifestyle of limbic retraining (breath work, walking, yoga, self-hypnosis, etc), fasting, and encouraging acetylcholine have helped me very much.

I'm only a teen. I went to a rheumatologist and apparently all my problems that I have had for so many years were symptoms of hEDS except for the twitching of my muscles. I had so many symptoms like me being flexible, having anxiety and depression for no reason at all, being so hungry and then not being able to eat after 2 bites because I had the sensation of being hungry, being light sensitive, scarring easily, my knees hurting a lot, joints feeling loose, heart beating really fast when I stand up or in the morning, craving salted popcorn and apparently I had a blue tinge in the white part of my eyes. My mom told me that she had noticed they were slightly blue but thought nothing of it. I nearly cried today because I finally knew what was happening. I hope that rheumatologist and any understanding rheumatologist out there wins the lottery at this point

This makes so much sense to me! I have hypermobility and anxiety and whenever I go to the doctors I have a very high resting pulse rate! I’m glad to know there is a reason behind it x

This is me. I fainted all the time as a child, I am double-jointed, which led me to gymnastics as a child. I am currently in therapy to deal with a lifetime of dissociation, from childhood emotional trauma. And, currently, I am experiencing autoimmune issues, likely related to too much cortisol production over my lifetime. I feel like this makes my inability to deal with my emotional trauma, make more sense, as well as the reaction of my brain to self numb and shut down. I relate to everyone on here, I feel so seen. Keep posting your findings, and thank you for your research.

As a person with both Ehlers Danlos syndrome and C-PTSD I loved this!

This makes so much sense! I have EDS, but I have to say that the anxiety I suffer from is even worse than the bodily pain. I am such an emotional person, and I do get panic attacks quite often. Learning how to breathe properly has helped luckily. But I do freak out quite a lot haha

I discovered my severe anxiety, depression, IBS and hypermobility are connected few years back. I'm yet to find a regime that would work for me. I wish more medical professionals connected the dots and treated us accordingly

I have joint hypermobility syndrome including chronic fatigue and malaise. I struggle a lot with anxiety which mostly revolves around fear of having to do more things, because of how horrible needing to do things is due to feeling so ill and exhausted. Like, if my dog throws up I panic that he'll be sick all night or need to be taken to the vet. Everyday problems seem much bigger now I'm so unwell.

I have hEDS and Orthostatic Intolerance and have struggled a lot with my mental health. Thank you for researching this!! Very interesting

I have anxiety and I’m pretty sure I have hyper mobility 👁👄👁 I saw this and clicked so fast