schema: eds-research/corpus/v1
category:
  id: folk-and-early-management
  label: Folk practices and early management
  description: How people managed loose joints before modern evidence existed. These records describe history; they are not recommendations.
  order: 70
records:
  - id: folk-rest-immobilization-era
    kind: practice
    title: Rest, immobilization, and the brace era
    summary: "Before modern physiotherapy, management of joint instability centered on rest and immobilization: bandaging, splinting, and restricting activity. Clinical consensus has since moved the other way, toward active strengthening."
    date: "1900"
    date_precision: century
    subtypes: [unspecified]
    status: historical-record
    criteria_era: pre-nosology
    practice_kind: folk-practice
    evidence:
      - stratum: historical
        tier: retrospective-account
        source_ids: [source-5c33d96b50581fbe82f8]
        note: The treatment-arc literature documents the rest-and-support era before active rehabilitation became standard.
    reviewed_at: "2026-09-16"
    risk:
      level: caution
      note: Sustained immobilization is now understood to weaken the muscles that stabilize hypermobile joints.
    tags: [rest, immobilization]
  - id: folk-performer-training
    kind: practice
    title: Performer conditioning and occupational flexibility practice
    summary: The “elastic” performers of travelling shows trained and protected their flexibility as a working skill. The sources describe how they lived with hypermobility, not a treatment for it.
    date: "1880"
    date_precision: decade
    subtypes: [unspecified]
    status: historical-record
    criteria_era: pre-nosology
    practice_kind: folk-practice
    evidence:
      - stratum: historical
        tier: retrospective-account
        source_ids: [source-5c33d96b50581fbe82f8]
        note: Wile 1883 and Gould and Pyle 1897 documented performers and their practices, as cited by Parapia and Jackson.
    reviewed_at: "2026-09-16"
    tags: [performers, folk-context]
  - id: folk-diet-supportive
    kind: practice
    title: Diet, tonics, and general constitutional support
    description: Historical management of fragile connective tissue included diets and general tonics. None has a validated mechanism in EDS.
    summary: Historical management of connective-tissue fragility included dietary measures and general constitutional tonics, the usual response to a poorly understood systemic condition before specific therapies existed. None has a validated mechanism in EDS.
    date: "1900"
    date_precision: century
    subtypes: [unspecified]
    status: historical-record
    criteria_era: pre-nosology
    practice_kind: folk-practice
    evidence:
      - stratum: historical
        tier: retrospective-account
        source_ids: [source-5c33d96b50581fbe82f8]
    reviewed_at: "2026-09-16"
    risk:
      level: caution
      note: No dietary measure has validated evidence as an EDS treatment.
    tags: [diet, constitutional]