People With Joint Hypermobility Are Much More Likely To Have Autism. Why?

Exploring The Connection Could Lead To Better Understanding For These Conditions and Other Related Conditions

I have spent most of my life disabled from four different conditions. While this has been personally devastating to me, that is not what this article is about. The story of my illnesses is much bigger than me. The same pattern of conditions repeats over and over again in people across the globe and we will not understand their origin unless we start to evaluate them as a pattern. This is the beginning of a story about connections and about why people like me are sick.

I have:

Hypermobility type Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) is a connective tissue disorder that makes my joints bendier than normal. I’ve had it since birth. I’ve had ME/CFS for over twenty years since I was a teenager. People with ME/CFS suffer from chronic exhaustion and exercise intolerance.

MCAS came on at precisely the same time as the ME/CFS. MCAS is caused by an overreactive type of immune cell called a mast. It causes strange reactions to foods, mold, heat, chemicals and other things and chronic inflammatory symptoms.

I am a woman and thought that I was merely autism-y or autism-ish until I was actually diagnosed with autism in my mid-thirties. Like most people, I had always thought that autism was for boys.

No one knows the cause of hypermobility type EDS, ME/CFS, high-functioning autism, or MCAS. People with these conditions do not get effective treatment. Many do not even get diagnosed. But a huge proportion of people with ME/CFS also have hypermobility type Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and MCAS. They form a distinct and pitifully researched cluster.

Even less recognized is how very often autism and hypermobility type EDS occur together in the same individuals.

The geneticist who diagnosed me with hypermobility type Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) happened to…

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