Jameela Jamil has opened up about her rare tissue disorder in an effort to “raise awareness” for the condition.
The She-Hulk star has previously discussed her struggles with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a group of disorders that affects the skin, joints and blood vessels.
However, on Tuesday (27 December), Jamila said that “in spite of the fact that people like to make fun of me over my health”, she wanted to explain the condition further and show the effects of her EDS on TikTok.
“Jesus Christ, that is not an app, that is not a filter, that is just my face. Look at how elastic that is,” the British actor said as she stretched her cheeks.
“The reason it is so elastic is because I have something called EDS, that is Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. I have EDS3, hEDS3, and it’s the ‘H’ because I’m so hypermobile.”
Continuing to show her arm hyperextending, she added: “It pertains to my joints. As you can see nothing bends the right way, everything bends the right and wrong way.
“Yes, that is very sexy, thanks for asking.”
Jamil went on to stress that “it’s a really serious condition and it impacts every single part of your body and it even affects your mind”.
“It’s very dangerous to not know you have it if you have it because of the way that it impacts bruising, bleeding, healing, if you want to have a baby,” she said.
The Good Place actor warned that children with EDS shouldn’t be “doing contact sports”.
“I’m lucky that I was diagnosed when I was nine years old so that I was able to avoid a lot of the things that would’ve made me much sicker when I got older,” she said.
Jamil went public with her EDS diagnosis in 2019 when she was awarded the Patient Advocate of the Year by the Ehlers-Danlos Society.
In her acceptance speech at the time, she apologised for taking “so long to speak publicly about my condition”.
“I was afraid of being discriminated against, and I think I feel, I felt, discouraged by how little information there is about it publicly, and still how little research is being done around this condition.”
