Being able to bend your joints easily is often seen as a sign of flexibility, but hypermobility is more complex than that, and can show up in ways that aren’t even connected to your joints. Hypermobility can affect how your body moves, feels and copes with your everyday activities, and is often overlooked.
Why Hypermobility Is More Than Just Flexibility
Although hypermobility often looks like someone has impressive flexibility, it is actually a connective tissue difference which can affect your entire body, and not just your joints.
You are not just bendy, as your underlying genetic factors affect how your ligaments, skin, blood vessels and even your gut behaves. So, that means, two people that can touch the floor with flat palms can have completely different symptoms and experiences.
Having hypermobility can shape your athletic performance, where you could excel in dance, gymnastics or yoga, but you might struggle with stability, control and your recovery. Small technique errors or over-training your body can cause strains or subluxations.
Sports aside, you might feel the effects every day like getting fatigue from just standing, needing more breaks or having to adapt your workspace.
Signs Of Hypermobility People Often Miss
You might notice muscle weakness around your major joints, because your muscles are working overtime to try and stabilize them. Tasks like carrying groceries, standing in a line or even holding your phone overhead can feel demanding on your body.
There are also sensory issues with hypermobility, where clothing tags, seams or light touches can bother you more than they bother other people, or you can feel unusually aware of your heartbeat and internal sensations.
There are emotional impacts too, where you could feel clumsy, self-critical or frustrated when your body isn’t behaving as it should.
Pain And Fatigue That Do Not Always Get Linked Back
If you have constant aches, deep fatigue or your body just feels heavy, this can all stem from hypermobility, and not just because you’re stressed, having poor sleep or you’re out of shape.
As your joints move more than they should, your surrounding muscles, ligaments and tendons all work harder to try and control each step you take.
Over time, the extra effort can cause you chronic pain issues which migrate around your body, or flares up after doing ordinary activities. You could also feel wiped out after a social event, or a normal work day, leading to frustration and self-doubt.
Joint Instability And Frequent Minor Injuries
The same overworked feeling in your body doesn’t show up as just pain or fatigue, it also affects how stable your joints are from moment to moment.
When you have joint laxity, your joints may slide or wobble in their sockets, so you end up rolling your ankles, jamming your fingers or tweaking your knees doing simple every day things. You could experience sudden twinges, tiny pops or a sense that something’s almost slipping out of place.
Hypermobile joints rely heavily on your muscles for control, so muscle fatigue sets in quickly, making stability worse by the end of the day or a workout.
You might also have proprioception issues, where your brain misreads where your limbs are in space, so you end up misstepping on the stairs or bumping into the door frame
