Doctors Break Down What Halsey’s Diagnoses Really Mean

What is Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, or EDS?

EDS is a group of disorders that affect connective tissues supporting the skin, bones and blood vessels, according to the National Library of Medicine. “The most common thing that we tend to think of is joint dislocations or subluxations,” Dr. Alissa Zingman, a Musculoskeletal Preventive Medicine physician and co-founder of the Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome Research Foundation, told E! News.

She added, “But it may not be so obvious as that, so it could be more like back pain at a young age, neck pain, headaches. Also, it has a big effect on the gastrointestinal tract in a lot of people, so they may have a lot of cramping, abdominal pain.” Dr. Zingman herself suffers from the disorder, as well as POTS and MCAS. 

How is EDS treated?

“A patient may be going to the gastroenterologist for their GI symptoms,” Zingman told E! News. “They may go to an orthopedic surgeon for their neck and shoulders, and a neurosurgeon for their low back, like pain shooting down their leg. They may go to psychiatrists for difficulty paying attention. They may be going to a neurologist for their headaches.”

Dr. Alina Sharinn (formerly Rabinovich), a New York neurologist, said, “Important for a neurologist like myself are vascular issues, so [patients] can develop arterial aneurysms, which is an outpouching of the vessel that can rupture and bleed, or they can develop arterial dissection, which is a rupture inside the wall of the vessel that creates extra lumen and that lumen can cause a blockage of that particular vessel or it can cause plaque formation that can go up and cause a stroke and has other risks.” 

According to the National Cancer Institute, lumen is the “cavity or channel within a tube or tubular organ such as a blood vessel or the intestine.”