Photo by Pavel Danilyuk
Pelvic floor physiotherapy uses exercises, changes to your lifestyle, education, and hands-on treatment to help you feel better and get rid of your symptoms.
In this therapy, a group of muscles that help with urinary, bowel, and sexual function are evaluated and treated. If these muscles aren’t working right, it can cause problems like incontinence, increased urgency and/or frequency, retention, and pelvic pain.
Many things can cause the muscles in the pelvic floor to become weak, too tight, or painful. Not all of this is due to getting older. Pelvic floor problems are common in young athletes and often start when a woman is pregnant or gives birth. A healthy pelvic floor is essential for men, women, and children of all ages. Physiotherapy for pelvic floor problems has shown 4 ways it can help, particularly for these 4 conditions listed below.
- During pregnancy and after giving birth
Having a baby and being pregnant is hard on your body. Your back, pelvis, pelvic floor, and abdominal muscles are significantly affected.
A physiotherapist can help you deal with these changes by giving you an evaluation, treatment, education, the right exercises, and help to get ready for birth.
After your first pregnancy and delivery, it’s essential not to ignore minor problems because they can often worsen when you have another baby.
- Incontinence
There are many different kinds of urinary incontinence. It could happen every day, more than once a day, or much less often, like once a month. It could be just a few drops or emptying of a full bladder. It could be reasonably predictable or completely random and only happen overnight.
No matter how bad your condition is, not being able to control your urine is not normal, and you do not have to live with it. Taking care of incontinence as soon as possible can also stop the symptoms from worsening.
Pelvic physiotherapy helps people with incontinence by changing their lifestyle, training their pelvic floor muscles, and giving them hands-on therapy. No matter what’s causing your symptoms, pelvic floor physiotherapy can help or get rid of them by:
- Getting the urethra to close better,
- Supporting the pelvis and reducing the downward pressure on the neck of the bladder; and,
- Training the pelvic floor muscles to coordinate with the other core muscles is important for managing pressure inside the abdomen during physical activity.
- General Pelvic Pain
Many things can cause pelvic pain. Pelvic floor therapy can help with pain in the genital or rectal area. Depending on your symptoms, pelvic floor physical therapy may include massage, electrical stimulation, and exercise programs.
When you have a baby, your pelvic floor muscles get stretched out, get weaker with age, or get too active when you’re stressed, all of which can lead to pelvic floor dysfunction. Many problems with the pelvic floor, such as pelvic pain, are caused by strained connective tissues.
Physical therapy for the pelvic floor restores the endurance, strength, and resting tone of the pelvic muscles and heals damaged muscles and connective tissues that cause pain.
- Intercourse Pain
Many things could cause pain during intimacy, so it can be helpful to see a doctor. If your doctor can’t figure out why you’re in pain, a physical therapist can check you out and devise a treatment plan to get rid of your pain.
If you live in a state where you can go straight to a physical therapist, that therapist will send you to a doctor if they think it’s necessary. Even though it hurts women more than it hurts men, it is possible for men to feel pain when they have sex.
Physical therapy for the pelvic floor may reduce or even get rid of sexual pain by a lot. Women and men can have pleasurable, pain-free sexual encounters again with the help of safe, gentle techniques. When you feel pain when having sex, it is often because of a group of skin, tissues, muscles, bones, joints, and nerves that are all connected.
Physical therapy for the pelvic floor breaks the cycle of pain and stops it from worsening. It boosts blood circulation in the pelvis, balancing, relaxing, stretching, and toning the pelvic muscles, freeing up stuck nerves, and reducing pain.
If you think Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy might help, contact Guelph physiotherapy clinics and clinics that offer pelvic floor physiotherapy in North York, or look for massage therapy in Oshawa and make an appointment as soon as possible.
