26 year old with rare skin condition challenges beauty standards through modelling

26 year old with rare skin condition challenges beauty standards through modelling A woman in her twenties with a rare skin condition that makes her look decades older is launching a modelling career to challenge beauty standards . Sara Geurts, 26, has Dermatosparaxis Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS), a genetic condition that leaves her with excessively saggy skin. She hopes to break into the modelling industry despite having the syndrome, which only a dozen people have. The aspiring model, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, has extremely soft, doughy skin because of the condition and her joints and muscles are also weak, leaving her in discomfort. Sara said: “The classical type of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome affects our joints, it affects our skin, everything. It’s a multi systematic disorder, so it affects every system within our body.” Although Sara doesn’t suffer from symptoms such as frequent dislocations and severely brittle bones, which are typically associated with sufferers from the classical type, Dermatosparaxis Ehlers-Danlos does has other pitfalls. Sara said: “There are numerous Ethlers-Danlos patients out there that have joints dislocate all the time. They are constantly in braces of wheelchairs. "Thankfully, I have not had that severity with my joints. I do have severe pain and things like that but they do not dislocate on a regular basis as of yet. “I have noticed as I get older, my discrepancies and my pain to my symptoms play a larger role in my life. I refrain from wearing super tight clothes because the more I do wear it causes constriction and because of the extra skin it can rip and cause tearing.” To deal with her joint pain, Sara relies on natural remedies such as massage therapy, acupuncture and medical marijuana , which is legal in Minnesota.