Today the daily mail published a terrible article on joint hypermobility (don't worry thats a do not link link). It is filled with a lot of lies and inaccuracies and the experts quoted are just some randomers who work in the private sector (don't trust private doctors as a rule, they don't have to follow guidelines and want repeat business).
Here are some of the worst quotes:
"But now the pendulum has swung the other way and hypermobility (or joint hypermobility syndrome) is often one of the first things doctors consider. It is increasingly being spotted in adults, too." Well this is a clear lie, I have to explain what it is to 99% of the doctors I meet as they have no idea what it is. With most I can at best hope for them thinking it's just hypermobile joints, at least that gives me a starting point to explain that it's a multi system disorder that causes me to have 10 to 20 joints dislocations a day, gastro issues and dizziness.
"Hypermobility has become the trendy self-diagnosis on the block" has it really? How are people faking hypermobile joints with dislocations both full and partial? Forcefully dislocating your joints to end up at a&e seems excessive and unbelievable. Plus, research shows hypermobility is probably pretty common, with it varying a lot in individuals. Is it just that we're getting better at diagnosing it because doctors are actually listening to patients? No no, it must be people faking it for benefits.
"But experts fear the symptoms are being over-medicalised" I'm sorry but how do you over medicalise hypermobility causing at the very least lots of sprains and soft tissue damage? Are these so called experts just wankers who don't want to listen to children and women? Yes.
"In the past decade there has been an ‘explosion in children being labelled with something that has always been around’, says Dr Nathan Hasson, a consultant in paediatric rheumatology at London’s Portland Hospital and an expert in benign joint hypermobility syndrome." Dude, you're clearly describing that it was under diagnosed in the past and now we're getting better at listening to patients. This is literally the pattern of every medical issue that doesn't cause mortality.
As a side note, Dr Hassan isn't listed as a recommended doctor by any of the hypermobility charities and the only times I've heard of him is him being rude and dismissive to patients.
"The problem is that children are being wrongly made to feel — whether by parents or doctors — that hypermobility means they are in some way unwell.’" Yes, listening to and helping your children is a bad idea. Force them to do stuff even if it hurts them I say!
"Safety concerns mean they are more likely to spend their weekends on a computer than climbing trees or swinging on monkey bars in the park." It wouldn't be a daily mail article without some sort of rubbish about health and safety,
"People sometimes say it hurts so badly they think they’ve got a dislocation, but what they’ve done is hyperextend the joint so everything feels out of place." This makes no sense, if things feel out of place then they are, joints and nerves aren't overly dramatic. I know the difference between hyperextending a joint and dislocating it, mainly because I can see that a bone out of place, as it pokes put under my skin.
"We need to be looking at why our children are so weak their flexibility needs to be given a label in the first place,’ he says. ‘We need to get them strong again.’" again, this makes no sense. I've been told by many doctors that to compensate for hypermobility you need to be much much stronger than a non hypermobile person. However, ligaments and tendons do a different job than muscles. Therefore strong muscles can't fix overly stretchy ligaments and tendons, how do medics think that that would even begin to work?
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