Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Explained: EDS pain management in Airdrie

Hi, my name is Maya. I’m an athletic therapist here at Revival Therapeutics and Performance.

So, EDS, or also Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, is a syndrome that affects the connective tissues in your body. Connective tissue in your body is anything that supports your body, like your tendons, your ligaments, your cartilage—anything that is used to stabilize your joints. And people with EDS, what is going on is that their connective tissue has more laxity. So they feel like they can move their joints a lot farther, possibly dislocate or pop them in and out, or just hyper stretch them.

And that can come with a lot of troubles as well because your joints aren’t stabilizing themselves and they’re not supporting themselves. So your muscles have to kick in and do the stabilizing, which means overworking and over-engaging, which leads to load issues and can lead to constant pain and mechanical issues when you’re doing different movements.

Some of the most common symptoms with EDS are chronic pain in the joints, strains, sprains of different ligaments and tendons, subluxations or dislocations of any joints in the body, kind of shearing or overuse with just doing basic movements like brushing your teeth, brushing your hair, showering, feeling unstable or unbalanced are a lot of common symptoms. And then there is also the other side of things like dizziness, nausea, having trouble with bowel or gut troubles. There are also feelings of being lightheaded, migraines, and headaches. All of those are also very common symptoms of EDS as well with hypermobility.

The reason why it can cause chronic pain or pain over time is because when a joint goes past the joint range it’s supposed to be in, the muscles then have to overwork to keep the stability because the connective tissue is no longer creating the stability. So the muscles have to overwork to do their job and keep your joints safe and in position. But if they’re constantly doing that every single day, with every single movement you do or do not do, sometimes just having to sit upright or lay down, your muscles still have to engage if the connective tissue isn’t doing their job.

What Is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and How It Affects the Body in Airdrie

Your muscles aren’t built to be contracted 24/7 every single day. So they fatigue, and then other muscles have to kick in to support when that’s not their job either. So your whole body, all of your muscles, are trying to work together just to stabilize your body and stabilize your joints together. But when they’re overworked and they’re doing too much, that is when injury occurs because your muscles can only do so much for your body.

And when they’re doing a job they’re not supposed to be doing, they can’t do it in the best way because that’s not what they were made for. So when there’s more elasticity and more mobility in the body, your muscles have to jump in and do the job instead. And then they’re not in a condition to do their own job of just being a muscle and creating strength and creating force. And so force doesn’t attenuate and move through your body as well, which can create injury and overuse.

The big thing with a client with EDS is that more is not better with an EDS client. Most of the time, the stability, the tension, and the tightness that they’re feeling from their muscles—just feeling really tight and restricted—is actually coming from the muscles just trying to stabilize their body and hold them together. But if you remove that tension and remove all of it, their body no longer has stability. So it feels like jell-o, and there’s too much mobilizing. The body is moving too much, which still isn’t okay.

So what’s key with it is making sure that especially with someone with Ehlers-Danlos or suspected hypermobility, you don’t do the same to one side that you are going to do to the other side. You want to make sure the body is balanced on both sides. You’re not going to release all of the tension because you take away all of their stability. You can take away a little bit to even both sides out so that they’re evenly distributed and there aren’t imbalances, but we don’t want to take all of that tension away because they won’t have the stability to function.

And then the big thing is if you’re going to remove some of that tension, you want to engage it afterwards so the body can see that everything is in place and you’re okay. Everything is stable and in line so that those changes stay. They don’t immediately pull back into that dysfunction that you’re trying to fix.

Why Hypermobility Leads to Chronic Pain and Injury in Airdrie

So the big thing with athletic therapy is we focus on your movement quality and your strength, making sure your proper muscles are being engaged and stimulated during the right movement. I find a lot of times with my EDS clients that what would be classified as a stage one exercise is still way too complex for an EDS body. They’ll be engaging the completely wrong muscles for the exercise.

Once you get with athletic therapy, with a proper assessment and a proper body assessment of your mechanics and walking through the exercises, I can see what muscles are being engaged during the movement. I can see when it’s not the correct ones, and I can change the exercise based off the body in front of me so that you are engaging the right muscle. Then we can build that muscle back up so your body no longer has to compensate with those other muscles.

And then we take that layer and slowly build on that with engagement and strength so that you can do your daily functions without being in constant pain and go about your day. Our whole goal is so that you don’t have to rely on our appointments and your treatments to be pain-free. We want to train you and train your body to be able to support you on your own.

Here at Revival, we have a lot of options for treatment for people with EDS to get relief. Some of them are with myself. Like I said, getting a proper mechanic and body assessment is huge to see which muscles are not doing their job in the team of your body, which ones are slacking, and which ones are overworked. Being able to analyze that is the big picture.

And being able to educate you on the little things you’re doing throughout your day that might be hindering you, like that party trick you have of hyperextending, touching your toes from behind, or dislocating your shoulder. Those party tricks can actually be hindering you. Being able to educate you on things you’re doing throughout your day that might be making things worse that you never knew about is huge.

And being able to show you how you can go about your day and the rest of your life with a lot less pain, because you shouldn’t have to go about your life and change your life because of the pain you’re going through every day. There are also a lot of other little things, like how electrolytes can benefit you if you have EDS, and things from a nutrition standpoint that can support you as well, which we’ll talk about in our appointments moving forward.

A lot of the other therapists here are trained to analyze as well, and we work as a team to support each other from a gut health perspective, an education perspective, an exercise perspective, and our massage therapists can support from the headache and migraine side and a lot of the cranial work that comes with EDS as well.

Airdrie Athletic Therapy, Stability, and Long-Term Relief for EDS

Proprioception is super important when it comes to clients with EDS because their neuromuscular connection—their nerve or brain-to-body connection—is usually weaker. So it’s really important to engage and bring proprioception into their therapy so the brain and muscles can reconnect and understand where their joints are in space.

That’s a big part of it. When you’re overusing and hyperextending joints, they don’t understand where they are in space because they’re not where they should be. Using this training can help your body re-engage and re-understand where it is and where it’s supposed to be. That helps with balance, strength, range of motion, and making sure your body can engage the correct muscles for exercises and daily functions.

With EDS, the big thing is wherever you decide to go for support, you need to have partially a manual portion, but it’s also really important to have a corrective exercise approach to your care. Without that, your body needs to be taught how to properly stabilize your joints, or you’re not going to find long-term relief and you’ll have to rely on other tips and tricks.

I want everyone watching this video, or anyone suspecting they have EDS or hypermobility, to know that there is a way for you to live your life without being in constant pain. You shouldn’t be in constant pain. Nobody should be living in constant pain. If you’re in pain, there is something going on that needs to be addressed from a mechanics perspective or another perspective.

Why Proper Assessment and Specialized Care Matter for EDS Clients

When it comes to EDS, it’s hard to find people to support you who understand what you’re going through. And I want you to know that at Revival, we do understand the struggle that comes with EDS, and we’re here to support you if you need it.

If you do suspect you have EDS, hypermobility, or you’ve been officially diagnosed, it is so important that you share that with your therapist or practitioner anywhere you’re working with. Without that information, they’re going to approach your body without the extra care that is needed for EDS. They may try to release everything and not focus on engagement or strengthening, and you could come out feeling worse than when you went in.

Not because the therapist did anything wrong, but because they didn’t go in with the right mindset or the right lens. Your body works differently than a regular body. Without that information, it becomes much harder for you to get the care you need. It’s so important that you have a clinician who understands what you’re going through and understands the extra care that’s needed with your treatment moving forward.