Thank you Emma and CLKD.
Since posting, I’ve found this on a hypermobile website :-
In females, it is quite a different story. Although oestrogen tends to stabilise collagen, progestogens loosen it. Many hypermobile patients, though not all, noticed a worsening in symptoms, more pain in the joints, clumsiness or a greater tendency to dislocate in the five days leading up to menstruation and in the few days after menstruation. This is exactly the time when the progesterone compounds far exceed the stabilising oestrogen compounds. This effect is most pronounced when the joint hypermobility is due mainly to collagen structure (the clue here is that all joints are almost equally lax throughout the body). Where the hypermobility is a marker of unusually shaped bony surfaces at the joint (typically these individuals have very pronounced hypermobility at only a small number of joints), the effect of hormones is much less pronounced.
Those females whose joints become worse at the time of menstruation often note that if the periods become irregular, for whatever reason, joints not only become worse but, are worse for longer. This may be because in these patients progesterone is present in high concentrations at times when it would not normally be present.
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Topic: Hormonal levels and flexible joints (Read 1925 times)