About this episode

Dr. Linda Bluestein interviews Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein about the challenges of orthopedic surgery in patients with hypermobility and connective tissue disorders.

What if being too flexible is exactly what makes surgery fail? And what if your doctor thinks your shoulder is fine because you can lift your arm to 90 degrees, not realizing that for you, 90 degrees might as well be a frozen joint? Your joints bend farther than most. But when something goes wrong, that same flexibility may be working against you and your surgeon may not know it yet. In this episode, Dr. Linda Bluestein sits down with Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein, orthopedic surgeon at Duke University, to pull back the curtain on one of medicine's most misunderstood intersections: hypermobility, connective tissue disorders, and orthopedic care. Why do surgeons sometimes refuse to operate on patients with hypermobility or EDS? What actually happens during an "atraumatic" dislocation and why does it feel so different from a typical injury? And how does estrogen quietly shape the strength of your connective tissue across your lifetime? Dr. Wittstein walks us through the critical distinction between joint laxity and instability a difference that changes everything about treatment. She explains the frozen shoulder paradox, where a hypermobile patient loses dramatic range of motion but still…

People in this episode

Host: Dr. Linda Bluestein

Guest: Dr. Jocelyn Wittstein

Topics covered

• hypermobility
• orthopedic surgery
• connective tissue disorders
• joint laxity
• surgical techniques
• chronic subluxations

Keywords

• hypermobility
• orthopedic surgery
• connective tissue
• joint instability
• frozen shoulder
• PRP
• estrogen
• subluxations

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Duke University

More episodes of Bendy Bodies with Dr. Linda Bluestein

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• Why Lipedema Resists Diet and Exercise with the Lipedema Foundation (Ep 198) · May 28, 2026 · 1h 14m
• Why Everything You've Been Told About EDS Lifestyle Is Wrong with Dr. Dacre Knight (Ep 197) · May 21, 2026 · 1h 9m

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