Aaron Hartman, MD, explains how connective tissue affects your nervous system, sleep, digestion, and athletic performance. Hypermobility is linked to ADHD and other neurodevelopmental conditions. He recommends nutrient and collagen-rich diets for people with these issues.
Questions this video answers
400% increased risk (claim in transcript).
Pilot UK study: ~20% of children; at least 1 in 30 adults in the U.S. (transcript claims).
About 30% of all meat consumption.
Chapters
Can you walk me through what is hypermobility and what are some of the unique challenges that come with being hyper immobile?
Well, hypermobility ultimately runs around your connective tissues. So people focus. You know, they're specialists for your heart specialists for your lungs, bone specialists. Right. But what holds all that stuff together? It's your connective tissues, even your neurological system, the insulation in your system, you know, electrical system without good insulation does what sparks and has house fires.
Right.
What's your body's insulation? The connective tissues. So all of a sudden now your connective tissues are almost like their own specialty that no one addresses.
Interesting.
So that's the first thing about them. The second thing is because hypermobility, not only does it affect your electrical currents in your body, that can relate to things like elevated cortisol and adrenaline when you sleep at night. So some sleep disturbances are related to adrenaline spikes. Adhd, here's a great example. If you're hypermobile, you have a 400% increased risk for being neurodiverse. Okay, that's autism, Asperger's, ADHD, dyslexia.
Right, sorry, just a brief topic on that is I was diagnosed with ADHD, you know, maybe about 10 years ago because in the quest of trying to figure out how my brain is way it is, and you know, the standard is you go in there and the psychiatrist sits you down, he's very serious looking guy, and he asks these series of questions and they go like, you know, do you have a problem focusing? Yeah, I do. And you know, 10 questions and guess what, you have ADHD. Here is some Ritalin or whatever it was I was given and you know, next patient. And I viewed that to a large degree. I didn't know what it really meant, but I viewed that to a large degree as a kind of a badge of shame or like I don't want to have adhd. And I've since changed the narrative around that. And I understand that people that have this thing, whatever ADHD really is, that you have very unique talents that allow you to do things that most people can't do. But so sorry, it struck me that 400% more likely you're actually reading my biography back to me.
Super interested. I'm like cynical.
Mobility adhd. Okay, tell me more about my.
Actually when you told me that stretching thing, I was always thinking, these people are everywhere. That's the thing about it is like people act as if it's rare. There's a pilot study in the United Kingdom that showed that 20% of kids there have this 20% of kids in the United States and our criteria are a little different. So they're a little more strict. At least one in 30 adults. So we're looking at least what, 30 million people in our country that have this. So all of a sudden this is a pretty, pretty common thing. But back to like your question about the stretchiness and connective tissues. So it's not just, it's not just insulation, it's also the fascia also themselves have an electrical potential. And so they're packed full of nerve endings. And so if they're a little more stretchy, you get a little more activation of your brain. So people that are hyper. So hypermobility actually is a superpower.
Interesting.
So just let's pretend you have a little higher. Yes, exactly.
Thank you.
You have a little heightened sense of alertness and awareness. You have a quicker reaction time. You can be an elite athlete. There are tons of elite athletes and dancers that are hypermobile. Michael Phelps, there's so many pictures of him on social media. Looking at him dislocating his shoulders like I put on social media a while ago, one of his pictures and his hands are going from here, touching the back. Right. You know, yet he's the fastest man in the history of the world. In the world.
Right, right, right, right.
And so all of a sudden you actually can run a little faster. My son is double jointed. When he was 8, he was already farther than I could because he has a slingshot for an arm.
Wow.
You know, a left handed hypermobile pitcher. I've got some patients like that, they can stay healthy, not injure themselves. They're going professional.
And I've always been told that that's one of the issues of being hyperly mobile, is you are granted to some degree, some superpower heroes, like in my jiu jitsu and my wrestling, I've gotten on some very unique holds because I can do unusual things with my legs. But I've always been told that you are far more susceptible to injury than the average person. This is true.
This is true. Yes. So because of the hypermobility, you also tend to have digestive issues because loosey goosey tissues in your GI tract affects digestion. So more IBs, more gas and bloating, more bacterial overgrowth, sibo kind of stuff, which can lead to their own kind of things. But it also can increase your risk for nutrient deficiencies, you know, vitamin C, trace minerals, B vitamins. At the same time, you have a radically increased need for collagen rich protein sources. So the way I kind of explain to people, it's almost like the hunter, gatherer, warrior. Kind of like you need high test octane. Giving a hypermobile athlete processed food, McDonald's and then going vegan could literally set you up for major health issues.
Just crush your gas tank.
I mean, exactly. It'd be like taking your Maserati and putting like watered down, you know, B7 octane into it. It's like it's not going to work very well. And so all of a sudden you need, you have higher, you have a higher need for nutrient dense food and certain things like collagen, like organ meats. Okay. Organ meats represent 30% of all meat consumption in the United States before World War II.
Right. I remember being served, we would have kidney, we would have liver. I mean, at my table.
Yeah, well, that might be one of. Yeah. So who eats that now? The answer is nobody. Bone broth. I remember watching a Leave it to Beaver episode when I was a kid and Joan, like, she's, you know, doing back in the 50s what they did, cooking the dinner or whatever.
Right, right, right.
So it's three o' clock in the afternoon and the kids, you know, we're going running around, so she goes into the fridge, pulls out a bone, right. Puts it in the pan, starts boiling it and my light bulb went off. 1950s, right? This was normal, right. Like TV represents like the normative values and things in the time. It's like, like I was like, why'd she grab a huge bone? I know, it's like. Exactly. So if you're hoping about, all of a sudden you need more bone broth, you need more organ meat. Right. You need more nutrient dense food foods. If you're drinking water, you need more mineral water that's rich in these trace minerals. And if we have a environment that's full of processed foods that are nutrient deficient, you already have these other nutrient deficiencies, including vitamin D. If you have a low grade inflammation from these little micro tears you get from the hypermobility and you don't get appropriate nutrition, then all of a sudden now your D levels bottom out. And so you have just all these interesting things that play off just of this one. One simple thing that's like, oh, what is it? It's like literally this is a missing link. Chronic illnesses in our country, Right. That everybody's overlooking.
