In this YouTube monologue Dr. Aaron Hartman highlights hypermobility—a condition affecting roughly 20% of the population—as a widely missed factor that underlies a broad spectrum of chronic illnesses. He explains that hypermobility reflects looser connective tissue and fascia, which act as the body’s structural “mortar” and influence nerve signaling, blood flow, and barrier integrity. While hypermobility can confer advantages such as greater flexibility and faster reaction times, it also predisposes individuals to a range of problems, including Ehlers‑Danlos syndrome, POTS/dysautonomia, mast cell activation, Lyme disease, mold‑related illness, neurodivergent conditions (autism, ADHD, Tourette’s), anxiety, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, long COVID, dental issues, and sleep‑related breathing disorders. Dr. Hartman stresses that clinicians across specialties rarely assess connective‑tissue health, yet doing so (e.g., using the Beighton score) can reveal a common root cause. He outlines practical interventions—targeted protein, collagen, vitamin C, D, magnesium, potassium, and trace minerals—as well as environmental modifications to reduce triggers. He notes the polygenic dominant inheritance pattern and the difficulty of tracking hypermobility across the lifespan, as flexibility often diminishes with age, masking the condition. The talk concludes with a call for broader awareness, routine screening, and early nutritional support to prevent or mitigate chronic disease in hypermobile patients.
Chapters
There's an elephant in the room that no one's talking about that affects 20% of Americans that's related with just about every condition that I see in my office. And we're going to talk about it over the next several episodes. You likely may not have heard of it. It may sound familiar, but it's most likely been overlooked no matter what specialist you're in, whoever you're seeing, and even the functional medicine world, it's super overlooked. And just now you're starting to hear inklings of it on social media. It's something I've seen in my clinic for years. Talking about hypermobility, a severe version of that is Ehlers-Danlos, which is rare. Still see that, have still a handful of patients with that. The hypermobility is super common. I want to talk about that in detail because most likely someone you love, you, someone around you has it and it can be a superpower or it can be a kryptonite depending on a lot of different factors that we'll talk about as well. So before we dive in that, a little bit of house clean— cleaning, housekeeping, a little bit of housekeeping, better way to say it. If you're watching this right now, odds are you're not following us. You're not subscribed. Most people who actually see us and listen to us don't. So if you can do that below, that'd be super helpful just to help get the word out there. Now back to the episode. So this Elfen Larrun hypermobility is something that's super overlooked. And it's really interesting. Someone can look at, look at, you can say you have POTS, a neurologist can say you've got small fiber neuropathy. Maybe you see a GI doctor and they say it's IBS. You know, you see your functional person, you say they have a gut issue, autoimmune problem. But does anybody say, look, all these people can have hypermobility, which all of a sudden increase leaky gut, that increase inflammation, that slow healing down, that can have your immune system and nervous system be overactivated. So therefore, no matter what the different diagnosis or system issue is, you have to take your connective tissue or fascia into account when looking at people. When you say it like that, it makes super sense, but the reality is who is actually doing that? And very, very few practitioners currently are actually looking at things that way. So I want to talk about hypermobility, what it is, talk about the spectrum of it and how many different issues it's related to, just to help wrap your brain around a little bit. So what is hypermobility? It's just basically your tissues are loosey-goosey, a little stretchy. It can go from anything from elite athletes to disabled patients. You know, you think about Michael Phelps can take his hands— if you— I'm dating myself a little bit here, but take his hands and literally touch them behind his back, right? Gymnasts, people that are super high producers, high performers tend to be neurodivergent and are 400% more likely to be neurodivergent. That's what I'm talking about here. And those individuals can sometimes flip the switch and go from that to Ehlers-Danlos, POTS, dysautonomia, autoimmune issues. Based on environmental exposures. But everybody starts out with the connective tissue fascia issue years and years and decades before they develop any health issues. And that's the point. It's— and the other thing is it's not just your joints, it's not just your connective tissue. Your fascia are literally your semiconductor of your body. They're the thing that can slow down or speed up nerve conduction. They wrap around all your nerves, all your muscles. They hold your heart in place. They hold your gut in place. They hold your joints in place. If they're off, it affects everything else. So we think about the fascia, it's like building a house. You might have the bricks, but what about the mortar? You might have the rafters, the wood, but what about the nails? And that's what the fascia is. It's that thing that holds everything else together. The other thing important about the fascia is that 80% of your nerve— there's efferent and afferent. There's stuff that goes out from the brain, stuff that comes back to the brain, the nervous system. 80% is sensory. It's your nervous system sensing your body or your environment. That's pretty crazy because that's in your fascia. And so sensing this loosiness, this extra stretchiness, these small injuries can put your nervous system in a fight or flight situation just from the hypermobility. I've had patients I've seen do just with anxiety and the anxiety was just that underlying hypermobility activating the nervous system. Once they did some body work and some other things, their anxiety went down a lot. But hypermobility itself is not an illness. It actually has advantage to living. People that are hypermobile can run faster, jump higher. They have quicker reaction times. They have a lower, a more sensitive startle response, which is protective in survival. They have a lot of advantages for survival. And the other thing is, if you're hypermobile, you have a 400% increased chance of being neurodivergent. So that's your super bright, super focusing individuals that think outside the box who imagine things we can't possibly think about. But then the opposite side of the spectrum, it could be really worse. You could have someone with autism or PANDAS or PANS. You could have someone with chronically dislocating joints, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, someone who's really susceptible to concussions. Lots of nutrient deficiencies related with hypermobility. So really understanding what's the base of this. And interesting, if you have anybody with a chronic health issue or anybody coming in your clinic and seeing you, you got to look at their tissues. You got to see, are you hypermobile? One of my passions is finding those patients and then saying, "Look, I know I'm seeing you for your issues. You have kids. You really need to focus on their environment, sleep, certain nutrients, protein, trace minerals," and then creating a safe environment because people that are hypermobile can be triggered easier. So, what What got me into this world? Well, I see patients with POTS, mast cell activation syndrome, dysautonomia, Lyme disease, a whole host of things, and started noticing they all, I mean, are all kind of hypermobile. Then I go to my conference and talk with my pediatric colleagues. "Hey, your neurodivergent kids, you know, are any of them hypermobile?" "Yes." I talk with a psychologist. "Hey, any of your bipolar patients, are any of them hypermobile?" "Yes." And all of a sudden I started realizing, Wait a second, this thing is really super common and connects a lot of different things. There's one study that showed that 100% of EDS and POTS patients show mast cell activation. So maybe if someone has MCAS, we need to be looking for hypermobility. Lyme disease is a connective tissue. It's really interesting with Lyme disease. The Borrelia likes low oxygen tension tissues. If your tissues are super loosey, guess what? They have less oxygen, less blood flow. Hmm, maybe that's a connection with hypermobility and your increased incidence of Lyme. How about mold toxins, mold illness? You know, mold disrupts barriers at the— the enzymes released by mold and/or your body response can actually make you more susceptible to leaky gut, barriers breaking down. What if you already have loose connective tissues? What if you're already prone to that and you already have problems with detoxification? Could hypermobility be the link there? The answer is yes, yes, yes, and yes. Hypermobility, again, it's like saying there's toxins in the environment. It's like saying, you know, there's mold in the environment. It's something that is super common, doesn't affect everybody adversely, but if you have it or the exposure, you know, then you really need to make that as one of your foundational fundamental things or whatever you're doing. It can't just be an anecdotal side note, "Oh, a patient with a Beighton score of 7." It needs to be something you think about. Significantly. Some other connections with hypermobility. About 50% of people with autism, Tourette's, or ADHD are hypermobile. I already mentioned the 20% of the general population. I already mentioned the neurodivergent. If you're neurodivergent, you have a 4 to 5 times increased chance of being hypermobile. The thing about this is that these are links. How many of our sick patients also have anxiety? How many of my POTS patients also have some low grades of PTSD, levels of PTSD? There's a It's a spectrum and these things are interconnected. The reality is it's all connected. That's one of my sayings, "It's all connected." Other associations, you know, with anxiety, panic disorder, depression, chronic fatigue, fibro, long COVID. It's really interesting, people that are hypermobile EDS have a significantly higher rate, rates of developing long COVID and the complications from it. Fibromyalgia, TMJ, you know, cervical instability, chronic headaches. All of a sudden now, All these things that appear to be unrelated are, do you grind your teeth? Do you have dental issues, cracked teeth? There's an association with hypermobility and poor dentition, upper airway resistance syndrome, which is a type of sleep apnea. And what happens? You get cracked teeth. I've had patients come in in their young 20s, early 30s. They've had like 3 or 4 root canals. All of a sudden, are you hypermobile? You might not see the connection initially, but once you realize hypermobility, sleep apnea, sleep apnea, grinding teeth, hypermobility, weak teeth, weak grinding teeth, teeth cracks, infections, root canals. All of a sudden, you can connect the following dots. It makes sense. And all of a sudden, now it's something that you need to be looking for in every single— I need to be looking for, I am looking for, any practitioner listening to this needs to be looking for in their patients. Now, why it matters. The reason why it matters to me is because if you can catch people on the front end of things, we can put increased protein, increase collagen, branched-chain amino acids, increased vitamin C. All these people have low C. Increasing their vitamin D, all their D levels are low. Magnesium levels are low. They tend to diurese the magnesium out more and potassium out more. So they all tend to need minerals. All of a sudden you start throwing these, these certain focused nutrients into this population and they get better. They feel better just from that. And you can also with the kids, give it to the kids and prevent future illnesses. One another thing with hypermobility is It's polygenic dominant, which I know sounds kind of weird, but the idea is that there's multiple genes that are related with it. We haven't really traced them out yet. We're not quite sure exactly which genes, but you do see it run in families in a dominant sort of way. So something that's out there, super common, related with chronic illnesses. So now that you know that, you may be convinced you're not. The question is, next what? What can we actually do to find it? What are the things I do in my clinic? And the reality is, if 20% of the population have this, which is what the literature shows us, it's really funny. It's, this is just, I think this just speaks to how we don't pay attention to stuff. If you look at the pediatric literature, it's like, you know, 20 to 25% of the population, college literature is 13.7%. You get the adult literature, it's like, ah, 5 to 8%. But those kids don't, they don't die, right? They grow up into adults. So what's happening? We don't know how to track that. And this is something else. We don't know how to track this from youth to adults to old age. As you get older, you tend to get tighter. So your back gets tighter, you lose flexibility, except in elbows, except in fingers and certain joints. And so all of a sudden these people won't get diagnosed if they make it past a certain age because your body's changing to adapt to the hypermobility. And so I think those, those data points just speak to the fact that it's something we don't know how to— most practitioners aren't familiar with tracking it as people age. And again, super common, 20% of the population has it. So if you or your loved one is hypermobile, has EDS or mast cell Lyme mold, et cetera, I'd love to hear about it. You can mention below. We need to really— this is how we get this information out here, how we educate people about it. And, um, we're gonna keep on talking about it. Take care. We'll talk to you soon.
