Simple finger flexibility test that reveals risk of terrifying lung disease
Dr Taylor Goldberg, a Colorado -based chiropractor, warned hyper-flexibility could be a sign the body's connective tissues are weakened or unstable.
The connective tissue, such as joints and tendons, are 'the glue' of the body that supports and gives structure to bones, muscles and organs.
It's especially crucial for the lungs as it helps provide functional support - and, unlike other organs, connective tissue makes up about 25 percent of its weight.
Over time, the weakening of connective tissue in the lungs 'can affect breathing mechanics and airway stability' - leading to serious respiratory issues such as asthma and obstructive sleep apnea.
About one in four Americans suffer from some degree of hyper-flexibility - which can be gauged using the nine‑point Beighton Score point system.
The test awards one point for being able to perform a series of movements including bend the pinkie finger back 90°, touching the thumb to the forearm, hyper‑extending elbows or knees more than 10° and placing palms flat on the floor with straight knees.
In adults, a score of more than five out of nine indicates they are hyper-flexible while in a child, it would be at least six out of nine.
For a small number of these people, their flexibility is caused by a condition known as Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS)
Dr Goldberg warned: 'Anecdotally, many people with Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes (EDS) seem to have more difficulty recovering from respiratory illnesses.'
'While we need more formal research, clinical experience suggests that people with EDS might have a harder time with respiratory illnesses compared to the general population,' she further told Newsweek.
Connective tissues are essentially made of two proteins called collagen and elastin, both of which are responsible for providing strength and elasticity to the body.
However, EDS, a genetic condition, can affect the body's ability to form protein molecules and in turn, impact collagen production as well as connective tissue strength.
The overall reduction of collagen in the body and subsequent tissue weakness can impair the lungs' capacity to breathe in oxygen at optimal volume.
This can lead to shortness of breath, respiratory muscle weakness as well as upper and lower airway collapse.
People suffering from EDS usually have overly flexible joints, stretchy and fragile skin as well as tend to bruise easily.
They also have joint and muscle pain, constant fatigue, digestive issues, bladder control problems and find it hard to concentrate.
There is no clear treatment for the condition however, doctors usually suggest undergoing physical therapy and wearing braces to help the muscles.
But Dr Goldberg also noted that EDS is a multi-systemic condition and can impact other systems rather than cause connective tissue weakness - suggesting that patients should get tested for both things.
EDS can be diagnosed through a physical exam of the skin and joints as well as an evaluation of the symptoms by a doctor.
Previously, experts have also noted that EDS patients also have 'had trauma, medical gaslighting, trying to find help and not getting help, so stress, anxiety, tension all starts to impact someone's breathing.'
While EDS can manifest neurologically in symptoms like headaches, fatigue and muscle weakness, it isn't considered a neurological disease.
However according to a 2022 study, out of 389 people suffering EDS that were surveyed, nearly all had depression while a little over half have had 'probable' anxiety.
According to The Ehlers-Danlos Society, there are thirteen different types of Ehlers-Danlos syndromes.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Daily Mail
Woman left BLIND after performing 13 cartwheels in a row
A fun day at the beach turned into a months-long medical ordeal for a Seattle teenager who went temporarily blind after doing cartwheels with friends. Deborah Cobb, now 42, was just 19 when she decided to see how many cartwheels she could perform in a row while having fun with her friends on a summer day in 2002. But after completing 13 consecutive cartwheels, the young woman fell over feeling 'super dizzy' and quickly realized something was terribly wrong with her eyesight. 'I decided to see how many cartwheels I could do in a row just for fun,' Cobb told Newsweek in a recent interview. 'So I started doing them and got to 13 and fell over super dizzy. My eyes were kind of spinning so it took a moment to realize that my eyes weren't focusing.' At first, she thought she was just dizzy but panic quickly ensued when she realized she could no longer see anything clearly. 'Looking at her [friend's] face, it was a giant orange blur. My eyes wouldn't fully focus,' she said. 'There was no pain, and my peripheral vision was fine, but everything I looked directly at was blocked by an orange blur.' Cobb first tried to play it cool and didn't immediately tell her friends how scared she was. 'I was panicking inside, but not outwardly so my friends didn't think anything of it,' she said. But her vision has not improved by morning. That's when she went to the hospital. 'My central vision was completely gone... I couldn't drive, I couldn't read, I couldn't see myself in the mirror... which meant I couldn't put on makeup... I couldn't even watch TV,' she said. At the hospital, doctors initially thought she had simply 'sunburned' her retinas. But when she saw a retinal specialist, she got a far more serious and rare diagnosis. 'I had hemorrhaged in both of my maculas and it was going to take three to six months to fully heal,' she said. Experts say the condition is extremely unusual in someone so young. 'In healthy individuals, especially young people, this occurrence is quite rare,' Dr. Rajesh C. Rao, an ophthalmologist who specializes in surgery of the retina, told the outlet. 'The head being upside down abruptly or repeatedly can also increase pressure in veins in the retina, and some at-risk individuals can be prone to macular hemorrhage.' Cobb said it took a while for reality to truly hit her. 'I started sobbing,' she told the outlet. It was the first time it fully hit me how limited I was and how dependent I was on other people for simple things like reading—which I had completely taken for granted.' While her vision did return after about three months, the bizarre injury still causes issues. Even decades later, Cobb still suffers flashes of light and dark floaters caused by retinal jelly detachment. 'The only option is surgery,' she said, 'but surgery almost always causes cataracts, which would only mean another surgery. So I'm okay to just live with it.' Despite the traumatic ordeal, Cobb remains grateful for all the joys in her life. 'We so often focus on what's going wrong in our lives, that we miss all of the things that are going right. 'There are so many simple gifts that could be bringing us joy every day, if we just learned to appreciate them. That's what this experience taught me: never stop being grateful.'
Reuters
4 days ago
- Reuters
Trump administration asks US Supreme Court to allow NIH diversity-related cuts
July 24 (Reuters) - Donald Trump's administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday to allow the government to proceed with sweeping cuts to National Institutes of Health grants as part of the Republican president's crackdown on diversity initiatives. The Justice Department asked the justices to lift Boston-based U.S. District Judge William Young's June ruling that halted the plan as a violation of federal law and required the government to reinstate access to the grant funds. The judge acted in a legal challenge by researchers and 16 U.S. states, led by Democratic-governed Massachusetts. The NIH is the world's largest funder of biomedical research. The cuts are part of Trump's wide-ranging actions to reshape the U.S. government, slash federal spending and end government support for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and transgender healthcare. The administration repeatedly has sought the Supreme Court's intervention to allow implementation of Trump policies impeded by lower courts. The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has sided with the administration in almost every case that it has been called upon to review since Trump returned to the presidency in January. In June, dozens of scientists, researchers and other NIH employees signed an open letter criticizing the agency's actions and spending cuts under Trump that they said politicize research and "harm the health of Americans and people across the globe." Young's ruling came in two lawsuits challenging the cuts. One was filed by the American Public Health Association, individual researchers and other plaintiffs who called the cuts an "ongoing ideological purge" of projects with a purported connection to gender identity, DEI "or other vague, now-forbidden language." The other was filed by the states, most of them Democratic-led. Young, an appointee of Republican former President Ronald Reagan, invalidated the grant terminations in June. The judge wrote that every new administration is entitled to make policy changes but that these must be reasonable and reasonably explained. Instead, according to the judge, the steps taken by Trump administration officials were "breathtakingly arbitrary and capricious," violating a federal law governing the actions of agencies. Young criticized administration officials for not offering any definition of DEI while disparaging studies they deemed low-value and unscientific that the officials claimed were used to unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race and other protected characteristics. "There is not a shred of evidence supporting any of these statements in the record," Young wrote. Many U.S. conservatives contend that DEI policies discriminate against white people. The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on July 18 denied the administration's request to put Young's decision on hold. The administration has argued that the litigation should have been brought in a different judicial body, the Washington-based Court of Federal Claims, which specializes in money damages claims against the U.S. government. That reasoning was also the basis for the Supreme Court's decision in April that let Trump's administration proceed with millions of dollars of cuts to teacher training grants also targeted under the DEI crackdown.
The Independent
4 days ago
- The Independent
Breakthrough weight-loss drug works without nausea or vomiting, scientists reveal
A breakthrough has been made in weight-loss drugs after scientists discovered a new medication – known as TDP – that works without causing side effects of nausea or vomiting. Millions of Americans are already using Ozempic and other GLP-1 class drugs to lose weight. While largely successful, the shots can cause uncomfortable gastrointestinal side effects. Those symptoms and others have landed patients in emergency rooms in recent years, with 25,000 visits occurring from 2022 to 2023, according to scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers say the new experimental rival largely forgoes those issues although how it works to curb appetite is still being researched. 'This paper shows for the first time that giving a smaller version of octadecaneuropeptide in the periphery is still effective to improve body weight and metabolic control without side effects,' Caroline Geisler, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky's College of Pharmacy, told Gizmodo this week. Octadecaneuropeptide, commonly referred to as ODN, is a protein produced by brain cells called glia that support the nervous system. The researchers used ODN to create the drug TDP. 'Now we know that [glia] play a large role in sensing and communicating the status of the body, and we hope that by targeting a glial signaling molecule, we can engage many energy-regulating pathways in the brain and avoid the side effects of nausea and vomiting,' Geisler said. In studies, the researchers inserted ODN into the hindbrain of rats, which contains the brainstem and cerebellum. The cerebellum is a part of the brain that controls movements and other cognitive processes, such as language and attention span. Once the rats were treated with ODN, they lost weight and improved their ability to control their blood sugar. Whereas when the researchers blocked ODN, the animals showed a weaker response to treatment with the popular GLP-1 drugs. They also dosed mice, rats, and shrews with TDN. The drug also improved blood sugar control, causing weight loss without nausea or vomiting in the rats for over a week. The shrews did not vomit either, and the drug appeared not to have effects on the animals' movement, body temperatures, and heart rate. However, the results, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, are only a proof of concept. The study's authors are hoping to test the drugs in people next. 'We have an optimistic timeline that we could be ready to start clinical trials within two years,' Geisler said.
