In the Media · HuffPost
HuffPost asked doctors what hypermobility really looks like. Dr. Courseault was one of them.
In “Doctors Share The Most Common Signs Of Joint Hypermobility,” HuffPost brought together physicians who work on the front edge of connective-tissue medicine — among them Dr. Jacques Courseault of The Fascia Institute and Treatment Center® — to help millions of readers recognize a condition that is hiding in plain sight.
Featured Article
Doctors Share The Most Common Signs Of Joint Hypermobility
HuffPost Life · featuring Dr. Jacques Courseault, MD
Joint hypermobility affects far more people than medicine has historically acknowledged — yet most patients spend years being told their pain, fatigue, and dizzy spells are unrelated, or simply the cost of being “flexible.” National coverage that treats the condition seriously is exactly what begins to close that gap.
So we want to begin with credit where it is due: thank you to HuffPost for recognizing that hypermobility awareness matters and for putting it in front of a national audience. Bringing practicing physicians together to explain what the condition actually looks like — in plain language, for the people living it — is journalism that does real good. Every article like this shortens someone’s road to a diagnosis.
We’re proud that Dr. Jacques Courseault, founder of The Fascia Institute and Treatment Center®, was asked to contribute — and equally glad to see him alongside other clinicians doing excellent work in this field.
Why HuffPost Called On Him
A physician who built his practice around the patients medicine kept missing.
Dr. Courseault is a board-certified Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation physician with a Certificate of Added Qualification in Sports Medicine and an Assistant Professor at Tulane University School of Medicine. He founded The Fascia Institute to treat the connective-tissue and fascial conditions conventional clinics are not built to manage — with hypermobility and the Ehlers-Danlos syndromes at the center of that work.
In the HuffPost piece, he explains why hypermobility is so easily missed: “the connective tissue isn’t holding the joint tightly, so the muscles around it have to work overtime to compensate” — the everyday exhaustion patients feel — and why standard imaging so often comes back clean when “a lot of the pain is coming from the supporting structures outside the joint, the muscles and the fascia doing all the stabilizing.” He also reframes the condition as more than a diagnosis of problems, noting that “a lot of the world’s best athletes are hypermobile.”
That perspective is grounded in published research. Dr. Courseault’s New Orleans work on the relationship between hypermobility and impaired folate metabolism appeared in Courseault et al., Heliyon (2023) and was extended in ACR Open Rheumatology (2024) — work that reframes a subset of hypermobility as a testable, treatable metabolic problem rather than a diagnosis of exclusion.
Board-certified, sports-medicine trained.
Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation with a CAQ in Sports Medicine — the training that connects connective tissue, fascia, and function.
Tulane faculty & published researcher.
Assistant Professor at Tulane, with peer-reviewed publications linking hypermobility to folate metabolism in Heliyon and ACR Open Rheumatology.
A clinic built for these patients.
The Gulf South’s dedicated Hypermobility & EDS Clinic — ultrasound diagnostics, a multidisciplinary protocol, and a research focus.
In Good Company
A tip of the hat to the other clinicians in the piece.
Good hypermobility care is a team effort across the whole field, and the HuffPost article reflects that. We want to recognize the fellow physicians featured alongside Dr. Courseault for the excellent, patient-centered work they do:
Dr. Linda Bluestein, MD
An integrative medicine physician and hypermobility specialist whose work — including her point in the article that anxiety is significantly more common in hypermobile patients — has done a great deal to help people understand the whole-body reach of connective-tissue disorders.
Dr. Vivek Babaria, DO
An orthopedics and sports-medicine physician whose contributions on joint subluxations and the physical signs of hypermobility help patients and clinicians alike spot the pattern earlier.
When more experts speak with one voice about a widely missed condition, patients win. We’re glad to share the page with them.
A Champion Speaks Up
WNBA champion Theresa Plaisance is opening up about her EDS.
Articles like this one matter most when people are willing to attach their name to them. WNBA champion Theresa Plaisance — whose Ehlers-Danlos syndrome was identified at The Fascia Institute and Treatment Center® — is choosing to speak publicly about her diagnosis. That takes courage, and it changes minds.
Her story cuts against the oldest myth about this condition: that hypermobility and EDS are signs of a fragile or under-performing body. An elite professional athlete competing at the highest level of her sport — while living with EDS — is proof of the opposite. A hypermobile body is not a broken one. It is a high-performance, high-maintenance one that thrives when it’s understood and cared for properly.
When someone with a platform is open about her diagnosis, thousands of people who have quietly wondered about their own symptoms feel permission to ask the question. That is awareness doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.
Why This Coverage Matters
Under-recognized is not the same as uncommon.
Hypermobility’s reputation as a rare, niche condition is wrong — and that misperception is itself the problem. When clinicians aren’t trained to look for it, they don’t find it. Patients are told their joint pain, fatigue, gut issues, and dysautonomia are unrelated, or psychosomatic, or just the price of being flexible. The average patient sees multiple providers over many years before anyone connects the dots.
National awareness changes that timeline. The sooner people recognize the pattern — because they read about it in a place like HuffPost, or because a champion they admire spoke openly about it — the sooner they get evaluated, and the fewer years they lose. Awareness isn’t marketing. For a patient, it’s the difference between a decade of being dismissed and a clear answer.
Learn More Across Our Practice
Recognize yourself in the article? Here’s where to read more.
The dedicated clinic model.
A closer look at how a purpose-built EDS and hypermobility clinic evaluates and treats the whole picture.
The specialty pathway (LA).
How our Los Angeles team approaches hypermobility and EDS — including the athletes who perform with it, not despite it.
PT built for hypermobility.
FIT Therapeutics was built specifically for hypermobility physical therapy — fascia- and connective-tissue-focused rehab for bodies standard PT didn’t resolve.
From the Article
— Jacques Courseault, MD, in HuffPost · Founder, The Fascia Institute and Treatment Center®
Read It, Then Take the Next Step
See yourself in the article? Get evaluated by a team that takes it seriously.
Our Hypermobility & EDS Clinic in New Orleans was built to receive you — ultrasound diagnostics, a multidisciplinary protocol, and clinicians who understand connective-tissue disorders from the inside out.
The Fascia Institute and Treatment Center® · New Orleans, Louisiana
Serving the greater Gulf South.
