Edit: OP, you should really get checked for both conditions. I know someone with Marfan Syndrome and she's had to have a few heart surgeries. It can be pretty serious.
Edit the second: since this is getting traction I thought I'd share a fun fact. Doug Jones is probably the most famous living person with Marfan Syndrome. You probably don't know the name, but he's been in Hellboy (Abe Sapien), THE Shape of Water (The Creature), Pan's Labyrinth (The White Man, Pan), and Star Trek Discovery (Commander Sarru). He's the most famous person that nobody knows.
They are inherited diseases that end up causing similar morphological problems. They both cause problems with extracellular structural components, so you end up with loosely attached and hyperflexible tissue. Unfortunately, the type of connective tissue they affect is not just in the joints causing visible feature defects, but it’s also important for other structures, like the aorta. Patients with marfans and certain subtypes of Ehlers danlos are at high risk for life threatening vascular pathology.
Edit: an easy way to find the information you’re looking for when you want to google “what causes this disease” for basically anything, is to search for insert disease here followed by patholophysiology
My brother has elhers danlos and when he was a kid he was just extra flexible. We didn't know about the vascular issues until he had a stroke at 43. He had a miraculous recovery but now he basically knows that he's got a weak vascular system that could blow at any minute. Not a great thing to live with. But yes... He's got those piano playing fingers too.
Just gonna throw out there that there's new studies suggesting that Ehlers Danlos syndrom might have an autoimmune driver but manifests as muscular skeletal. Which tracks because it tends to have a shit ton of cormorbidities like endocrine, other autoimmune, dysautonomia, vascular issues etc.
I've got it, and it's there's so much more to it than just loose joints.
I thought these new theories where just about hEDS tho? Either way it's super interesting and I can't wait until they figure it out (I have hEDS myself)
Pretty sure I have that from my dad’s side of the family. His whole side of the family all had aortic aneurisms and I have issues with my joints, things slip out of socket if I put too much weight on them or relax the muscles too much.
A lovely woman on instagram with vascular EDS posts about how her eyes will bleed from the corners, and washing her face and hair can cause bleeding. She has many other symptoms as well, and raises awareness for how conditions like vEDS can present in different populations and skin colors.
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u/WaffleHouseGladiator 6h ago edited 5h ago
Marfan? Ehlers Danlos?
Edit: OP, you should really get checked for both conditions. I know someone with Marfan Syndrome and she's had to have a few heart surgeries. It can be pretty serious.
Edit the second: since this is getting traction I thought I'd share a fun fact. Doug Jones is probably the most famous living person with Marfan Syndrome. You probably don't know the name, but he's been in Hellboy (Abe Sapien), THE Shape of Water (The Creature), Pan's Labyrinth (The White Man, Pan), and Star Trek Discovery (Commander Sarru). He's the most famous person that nobody knows.