Thread by @BadgleyLaurence

BEIGHTON CRITERIA VIDEO: is somewhat disappointing because the model could not perform all the demonstrations. Her elbow hyperextensions were great.

https://twitter.com/BadgleyLaurence/status/1332951096055242753

The model was older, and when people age they lose their youthful ability to do all the hyperextensions. I would say that some of the degrees of the various hyperextensions degrade starting after 30 years old.

Another factor that must be taken into account is that Hypermobility can present as a mosaic in some persons. Their knees well demonstrate Hypermobility, but not the elbows.

There are other factors to regard when determining Hypermobility. A reliable question seems to be to. ask if the person could do the “back-bridge” as a child. Another is to ask the mother if the child could put feet to ears when younger.

A useful demonstration is to have the person put hand behind back and to raise fingers toward neck. Many hypermobiles can get fingertips up to top of the shoulders.

Another clue is to ask female patients about hypermobile functions in their sisters. If the patient is male, I ask about Hypermobility in both father and mother. Genetic inheritance certainly seems dominant within female lineages.

The ability to put palms on the floor with knees locked is a slam dunk. This is able to be done by many hypermobiles who have never entered a yoga studio.

The idea that yoga provides practitioners with perpetual Hypermobility qualities is something I am unsure of, and which someone should answer; if they have taste for a longitudinal study that will take decades to complete.

The whole yoga-Hypermobility relationship is arguable. What is the chicken, what is the egg? I have met plenty of hypermobile males and asked them how they were regarded the first time they took yoga. Their first response has usually been a wide smile.

Amongst males, a key question is whether they have dislocated any major joints. Hypermobile males often have had dislocations, and have done so in benign sports activities wherein it is unusual for non-hypermobiles to incur dislocations.

My own opinion is the degrees of hypermobile ranges of motion & dramatic displays of hypermobileness of several body parts provide no scientific evidence of amount of underlying organ dysfunctions & dysautonomias that the patient currently harbors or might harbor in the future.

Connective tissues pervade the entire body and well beyond the ability of clinicians to regard at surface of the skin & via views of ranges of motion of joints with lax ligaments. All internal tissues contain a matrix of connective tissue; known by God & Mother Nature.

Efforts by advocacy organizations to parse different hypermobiles into arbitrary categories of an alphabet soup of HSD, hEDS, EDS, etc. seems to me to just confuse the situation. Each patient is a custom package of protoplasm with a unique combination of heredity and environment.

What physicians have done & will continue to do is try to outguess Mother Nature: history, observations, and study clues provide empirical evidence for a case study of N=1. Successful application of therapies is similarly based on wisdom & empirical clinical knowledge hard won.

A major fallacy of modern medicine is most human ills can be cured if only the correct combination of synthetic chemicals can be discovered. The importance of these synthetics has exceeded value of the natural energies that exist to heal disordered humans & other animals.

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