How Hypermobility Could Be Contributing to Your Endo Belly, IBS and SIBO

Anyway, today I want to talk about Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and the hypermobility spectrum disorders and how they may be contributing to your endo belly, IBS, and/or SIBO.

Now, that doesn't mean everyone who's listening, like, your endo belly is caused by hypermobility.

It's just that endo belly, in my experience, is never just caused by, you know, one thing in every single person.

It tends to vary because we have, um, high rates of various co-conditions, and they can all contribute to gut symptoms.

So I tend to see that it might be a mix of things in each client.

So today I wanted to talk about how hypermobility might be playing a role.

But first, let's start with a little 101 on endometriosis and hypermobility because I've been talking about these topics for years.

I actually went back and I saw that it may have been the first episode that I ever did on it, but the connection between Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and hypermobility endometriosis with the kind of preliminary research that we had or just the research we had at the time was episode 164.

So, um, I really needed to do a, an update to give you guys the latest information.

So if you want to explore some of my older episodes because I've done interviews and I, I've covered it in different ways, then I've linked them in the show notes, or you can just run a search in my podcast for hypermobility or Ehle- Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and it's gonna come up.

But let's do a recap and update on the research.

So hyperbi- hypermobility spectrum disorders are a group of connective tissue disorders which affect soft tissue, including joint cartilage, your skin, your blood vessels, muscles, et cetera.

And the connective tissue can be thought of as the glue that's holding your body together, and when you have hypermobility, it's weak, it's overly stretchy, and it's fragile.

And hypermobility exists on a spectrum, and so that spectrum, um, can start at the lower end where there are no symptoms being caused by your hypermobility, and then the spectrum increases in symptom severity until we reach the hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome type.

Now, hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is one of, and the most common, type of Ehlers-Danlos, but there are 13 types in total, and they can all affect soft tissue.

Now, symptoms of hypermobility include, but are not limited to, bendy joints, but this is not always the case because, so it takes a long time to get diagnosed with hypermobility.

And what can happen is as hypermobile patients get older, they actually get stiffer, um, because the muscles are overcompensating for your joints, and they're trying to hold them steady.

So you might not think you're hypermobile, but you might have all of these symptoms of body pain and joint pain, et cetera, and end up getting diagnosed with fibromyalgia, but it's actually hypermobility.

Um, you may have joint pain.

You may have a history of dislocations.

Um, clumsiness, you might be told you're clumsy, but it's actually poor joint in- uh, stability, so you might kind of, um, knock into things, drop things because your, your wrists don't work as well and you don't realize.

You might trip, but it's actually because your ankles are giving way, et cetera.

Uh, you may have body and muscular pain.

You might have something called coat hanger pain where your neck and shoulders have a lot of pain.

You may get headaches and migraines, and this is due to the instability at the base of your, um, skull and neck.