When Your Body Finally Makes Sense

Follows Instagram account for months before all the pieces fall into place.

What on earth are all those acronyms? No idea, but won’t be anything that concerns me.

But hypermobility? Yes, I’m bendy. Double jointed, I suppose. So I guess that comes under hypermobility.

What’s the big deal with that?

Being bendy has been great. I could effortlessly be really freaking good at yoga. I was just average at every sport growing up, apart from hurdles, which were not exactly top of the P.E. activity list at school. Once a year at athletics sports day, perhaps. But those loose, mobile hips should have been another giveaway.

A few months go by.

MCAS. What does that actually stand for?

Oh okay, Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. It’s linked to histamine. Well, I don’t itch or sneeze and my hay fever went away 20 years ago when I changed my diet.

What do you mean histamine issues don’t just look like allergy symptoms?

Pain in joints, you say?

I get pain in my hands, feet and hips. That last one has been bothering me on and off for 30 years and I’ve had countless health practitioners try to figure it out without success.

Snorting myself awake around 5 to 6am. You mean that can be a possible sign of histamine issues?

Waking at 3 to 4am is a histamine dump, you say?

And my nose running when I eat? Oh, it’s not just when I eat spicy food. It was high histamine foods.

GI issues and food intolerances that come and go?

And a period of 4 years postpartum where my life came to a standstill as part of it?

And POTS, you say?

One form of dysautonomia. A nervous system that does not do things quietly behind the scenes like it’s supposed to. Things like regulate your heart rate, breathing, digestion and metabolism.

Oh my goodness. That will be the chronic fatigue I struggled with postpartum too.

What do you mean hypermobility that is symptomatic and adversely affects connective tissue in the body is likely HSD or hEDS?

Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder or hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome.

What do you mean if you have a bendy body then your chances of having a bendy brain are incredibly high too?

And there popped up my next acronym.

AuDHD.

Yes, it would appear I have the mix of both autism and ADHD.

And so the pieces fell into place and my whole life started to make sense.

Now, the hEDS and MCAS community can be a bit like an echo chamber.

The people who know, know.

Hypermobility is common. Symptomatic hypermobility is under recognised. hEDS and HSD are frequently missed, misdiagnosed, or diagnosed years later. For me, it was around 24 years from my first severe symptoms, and that figure is not untypical, with the average sitting at around 20 years.

What I want to bring awareness to is the very high proportion of people who are hypermobile and don’t know it. Especially those who have had random symptoms their whole life and never realised they might be connected. The people who have never quite been able to make sense of their own body.

hEDS and HSD are not rare. They are just rarely diagnosed. So the saying goes in the community: “Can’t connect the issues? Think connective tissues.”

Hypermobility is often hidden in plain sight. Many people do not realise their bendy joints, fatigue, pain, gut issues, dizziness, anxiety and sensitivity may be connected.

Sadly, when you have a connective tissue disorder, you don’t fit neatly into one health speciality. Neurologist, cardiologist, ENT, sleep clinic, gastroenterologist, urologist, gynaecologist, immunologist, ADHD or autism assessor, and the list goes on.

Because connective tissue is everywhere, hEDS can show up everywhere.

So people often see a physio for pain, a cardiologist for palpitations, a gastroenterologist for IBS, a gynaecologist for prolapse, a neurologist for migraines, a therapist for anxiety, and an allergist for reactions. But nobody connects the pattern.

And there is something really important I want to point out. So many of these things involve the nervous system.

POTS is a nervous system syndrome.

Hypermobility affects how safe, steady and supported the nervous system feels in the body.

MCAS is influenced by the nervous system.

Fibromyalgia involves the nervous system.

IBS is deeply connected to the gut and nervous system.

Chronic migraine involves the nervous system.

Chronic fatigue involves the nervous system.

Panic disorder involves the nervous system.

Dizziness can be nervous system driven.

Chronic nausea can have a nervous system component.

And when you start to see the pattern, the whole thing becomes less random. This is why I get so passionate about calming the nervous system. Because when the body is sending out a dozen different alarm signals, it is very easy to think you need a dozen different solutions.

One thing for the gut.

One thing for the sleep.

One thing for the anxiety.

One thing for the pain.

One thing for the hormones.

One thing for the histamine.

One thing for the dizziness.

One thing for the exhaustion.

One thing for heart palpitations.

And of course, practical support matters. Good practitioners matter. Nutrition matters. Sleep matters. Appropriate movement matters, which is why my focus has shifted from yoga four times per week to weight training three times per week.

But underneath all of it, there is the state of the system. A body that feels unsafe will keep sounding alarms. I recognise my symptoms got worse at various times in my life when I felt unsafe.

A body and nervous system that feels steadier can begin to quieten down.

This is where my coaching work comes in.

Not by poking at trauma or analysing every anxious thought. Not by making you have difficult conversations that irritate your nervous system. And definitely not by turning healing into another full time job. My work is about helping create the inner conditions for more steadiness.

Understanding the nature of thought and how the mind works, which I believe is the biggest contributor to our health of all.

Understanding why the body can feel under threat even when there is no immediate danger. Because when the nervous system settles, the body has less to shout about.

And this is the bit that still amazes me, even after more than 20 years in health and wellness. You don’t always have to chase every symptom separately. Sometimes, when the system calms, a whole cluster of things can begin to soften together.

Sleep improves. The gut settles. The pain dials down, and sometimes it goes completely. I cannot tell you what a euphoric moment it was to solve my hip pain after 30 years.

The reactivity lessens. The anxiety loses its grip. Because the body is no longer being asked to function from a constant state of threat.

And for those of us with bendy bodies, sensitive systems, histamine issues, dysautonomia, AuDHD traits, and a lifetime of being told “everything looks normal”, that is not a small thing.

It’s huge.

Because once you understand the pattern, you can start seeing your body as intelligent. And when we learn how to meet that body with steadiness rather than fear, things can change.