EFFECTIVE hypermobility Syndrome PAIN MANAGEMENT
THIS IS A KEY AREA IN OUR MANAGEMENT AT BODY LOGIC HEALTH. AS MOVEMENT SPECIALISTS, WE HAVE DEVELOPED A COMPLETE PHILOSOPHY TO NOT ONLY TARGET YOUR PAIN BUT HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THE WHY. HELPING YOU GET A PLAN IN PLACE FOR THE LONG TERM MANAGEMENT.
Understanding the issue
Primarily you are probably at this page because you have recently been told you are hypermobile. So you are trying to understand what this means, how it will affect you and what you can do to help manage this syndrome. The aim is to give you an outline of the issue and improve your understanding of how to manage the condition.
Please remember that hypermobility is a spectrum disorder, so while you may have mild symptoms and movement changes, someone else might have more extreme changes. Neither is in a worse place – the management will be primarily the same. The key is that if you have more factors present you will need to work harder to achieve and maintain the best outcomes for you.
The vital thing to understand is it is not like a muscle injury that will repair and you are ready to go back to your activities. Hypermobility is with you for life so is essential to be aware of
which joints and soft tisues are affected and have a plan to help you manage your movement long term. The good news is exercise will really help and here at Body Logic Health, we have a pathway that can help get you to a better place for long term management.
What is Hypermobility?
You are not alone. Hypermobility is thought to affect 1 in 5000 people globally, and is considered one of the most heritable disorders of connective tissue. While generalised hypermobility spectrum disorder will be even more prevelant.
The condition is related to your connective tissue development, which helps ensure ligaments are strong and muscle tone is good. Primarily you will notice the factors externally, however it will affect many soft ittsues that use connective tissue as part of their makeup. In your case this connective tissue is more flexible than normal, remember it is a range, so everyone is different.
Now you can improve joint range through training, such as in ballet, creating localised joint hypermobility. But joint hypermobility is generally seen as a hereditery issue, and could affect one or multiple joints. If you don’t have symptoms it is considered ‘asymptomatic’ and although not a problem there are things you can do to reduce your risk of issues.
Suspecting you are here with symptoms then the aim is to understand and improve your management long term so you are in a better place.
Why is Connective Tissue Important?
Connective tissue is designed to perform a number of functions within the body, and works through many different soft tissues. The connective tissue is a major part of skin, bones, tendons and ligaments, helping add structural integrity and support to the surrounding structures.
One of the major tissues that is entirely made up of connective tissue is fascia, which are thin strong sheets of connective tissue that lie under the skin and attach to almost everything. The role is to stabilise, attach, separate and enclose the muscles and organs of the body. Changes in loading of the fascia can cause pain and movement issues for people.
It is quickly becoming clear why a defect in the genentic make up of fascia can have such a huge effect on our bodies.
How can we help you?
Your pain must be addressed first. It is important to be able to get on with your daily activities and there are huge benefits to returning to normal activities. This will also include activity modification to allow your tissues time to settle and recover. Movement management initially is crucial. Your movement specialist will complete a full assessment to understand the best way forwards for your condition.
We will review your Beighton Score – a series of tests for your joints to understand where you sit on the hypermobility scale. Along with this they will ask about other factors to help confirm the diagnosis, like family history, pain patterns and other factors.
You will then have this fully explained to you:
Building your understanding of your symptoms with a full diagnosis. This will include a discussion about hypermobility and how it might affect your recovery. The key initially is to reduce the stress onto the affected tissues, which will be through a combination of manual treatment, targeted exercises and possible taping to reduce the current pain levels.
The first step to ‘remove your pain’.
You will then begin the best treatment to help your recovery, and our highly skilled physiotherapists will give you the best outline of the time frame for this first step.
BUILD YOUR FOUNDATION
Building your foundation is the key to step 2. This is more important than in any other diagnosis, as hypermobility will quickly lead to you overloading the tissues again. We now need to work in partnership to move you to a better long term place for your movement health, so to complete this phase we need to identify the underlying movement faults that you have. You have a couple of options here depending on your specific requirements and end goals and your options can be fully discussed with your practitioner;
1. Movement Screen – a brilliant way to understand how your movement affects your tissue loading and can be easily related back to many of the reasons behind the injuries we see in clinic each and every day.
2. Pilates Discovery Session – can be an exciting option looking forward at your long term movement health, the Pilates screen helping identify issues in your movement that can then be addressed through targeted Pilates sessions.
3. Running Video Analysis – if running is your thing then this is a great way to change the way you move to prevent future issues.
4. Walking / Rehabilitation Evaluation – your symptoms have settled but your stability has not been fully resolved which is especially crucial to walking and understanding how you move and this in turn can open the pathway options to improved patterning and create long term movement health.
You will have the ‘how you move’ identified and explained in full detail to you, and this will allow your movement specialist to plan the next phase of your recovery.
The main goal in building your foundation is to not only identify the underlying causative factors but explain why they could create long term problems if not addressed. This means you can make lifestyle changes to help avoid recurrence and begin the movement retraining phase to adapt how you move to change excessive loading and tissue stress building up again.
Common Signs & Syptoms of Hypermobility Syndrome
Joint problems are the most common issue for people suffering from Hypermobility Syndrome, but there are other possible symptoms that you may experience. These may be related but remember you may not have these issues at all.
Persistent Fatigue
Acute Joint Pain
Persistent Pain – which can vary in body part for no reason
Poor Proprioception – clumsiness, reduced awareness of your body in space and time
Reduced Response to Anaesthetic
Bladder Overactivity or Weak Pelvic Floor
Early Onset of Osteoarthritis
Varicose Veins
This is to give you an idea of other issues you may be experiencing and how they might all relate to the same underlying issue of hypermobility syndrome. Too often these related symptoms are missed by the treating clinicians but they are part of the bigger picture and should be discussed and understood fully as part of the diagnosis.
ELEVATE YOUR PERFORMANCE
The hardest part for everyone is to stay motivated once you are feeling great and moving well again. We all know life gets in the way of looking after you. If you feel you need further help to achieve your performance goals or to maintain your lifestyle, there are ways we can help you.
If you have completed the first two steps, you are now ready to achieve lifestyle and performance goals – step 3. At this phase our great Sports Rehabilitation & Performance team will often take over your management.
There are plenty of options for you depending on your specific goals, so please discuss your options with your clinician. This step will help the long term management of your hypermobility pain solution, and will involve individually designed programmes to complement your home exercise programme.
You can now see the whole pain to performance solution. This will help you create movement health and allow you to enjoy the life you want to live.
Don’t delay starting your hypermobility pain pathway to help you return to your life without your current issue.
Start your journey today and enjoy your life again.
Ready to start your recovery?
Get in touch with us now
Have a question?
Wondering how we can help you? Give us a call and one of our expert team will be happy to answer all your questions!
Ready to book?
You can book your appointment online by clicking below. If you’d prefer to talk first you can call us on 020 7924 6068 or email battersea@body-logic.co.uk