The best evidence for early medieval health comes from the skeletal evidence from thousands of excavated burials. There are some difficulties in interpreting this material, as very few early medieval graves include soft tissue, so paleopathologists focus on diseases or traumas that cause changes to bony surfaces. These tend to be chronic diseases such as tuberculosis, leprosy, or long-term infections, which excludes many of the most common causes of death. There is also a “health paradox”—just because a person shows signs of having lived with disease or injury for a long time before their death does not necessarily mean they were the weakest or the sickest in the community: the fact that they survived their condition long enough for it to have caused bony changes strongly indicates that these were people healthy enough to live with their disease, perhaps supported by good care from the community.