Tuesday 12 November 2013

Hypermobility syndrome- Media Awareness

Snap, crackle and pop should definitely belong to hypermobility syndrome rather than Rice Crispies. My shoulders have been embracing the cereal phrase the last few days with a nice sprinkling of pain. The last three days have been hard on my joints. My hip has been painful and jarring and my shoulders and wrists have been clicking like crazy and aching a lot from work.

As annoying and tiresome as all this is, I am finding it comforting to see more and more press and media attention going to HMS. I have received a lot of messages from people who share frustration, pains, symptoms and worries, so it’s nice to see that awareness is happening:

The BBC Radio One Teen Awards took place on November 3rd and a number of teen heroes were acknowledged. One of these extremely deserving teenagers is  a young man named Alexander, who suffers from HMS. On top of his condition he also cares for his mother and has dealt with physical and mental bullying.


An article in The Metro on November 5th discusses a sport that’s taking off in the UK and across the US- roller derby. One of the women interviewed for the article, Emmeline May, saw the sport as a ‘revelation’ despite having HMS.


I stumbled upon an article on Yahoo! Lifestyle on Saturday, written by Kash Salem about her everyday life living with HMS/EDS which I really liked. It’s helpful as well as being very easy to relate to


One more, from June this year, is an article on the Huff Post UK Lifestyle section, written by Rebecca Allen called 'Living with hypermobility syndrome'. I’ve seen this being shared around on Twitter a lot and it is a good read.


Four examples may not seem like many, but it goes to show that there are people out there getting the message of sufferers across.  A quick search for 'hypermobile' or 'hypermobility' on Twitter will return some results of celebrities sharing woes about their joints. Writer Caitlin Moran quite often brings it up on her feed in general chit chat. There can be never be enough awareness, so let's hope these examples begin to multiply and media attention builds for hypermobility syndrome.




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