What To Wear to PT and Other Questions for Your First Pelvic Floor PT Visit

What will take place during my first visit?

If your first visit is an evaluation appointment, your therapist will ask you questions about your specific concerns and discuss your treatment goals. Depending on your condition, your therapist may recommend an internal assessment of the pelvic floor. During an internal exam, therapists assess pelvic floor muscle tone and integrity and gauge motor control and function. 

Treatment plans vary, but therapists may use follow-up sessions to perform external trigger point release and connective tissue manipulation that calm the nervous system and increase blood flow to the area.

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Kegels Aren’t for Every Situation: Cases Where Kegels Aren’t the Answer in Pelvic Floor PT

What are Kegel Exercises?

Kegels are an exercise designed to strengthen the pelvic floor. They are so named after the American gynecologist Arnold Henry Kegel who proposed this as a first line of treatment for urinary incontinence in 1948. Today, we also refer to this exercise as a pelvic floor contraction and use it for various other conditions. 

The aim of a pelvic floor contraction is to train the muscles that run like a sling or hammock from the pubic bone (the bone just above the genitals) down and back towards the tailbone.

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Postpartum Health: Why You Should Consider Pelvic Floor PT After Baby

Did you know the pelvic floor is working hard throughout your entire pregnancy? The whole time your baby is growing, your pelvic floor is working harder and harder to hold her up against gravity. In fact, all the jobs of the pelvic floor become more difficult as your baby is growing.

Hormones circulating throughout our body relax ligaments that help to stabilize the pelvis normally. With less ligamentous support, your pelvic floor has to work even harder to take up the slack and keep you upright.

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How Does Yoga Help Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy?

The pelvic floor encompasses several muscles that run like a sling from the tailbone forward to the pubic bone at the front of the pelvis. These muscles have several functions. They support our organs (especially bowel, bladder, and uterus), help control bladder and bowel movements and even have a role in sexual function. If that wasn’t enough for one group of muscles, they also are part of our deep core muscles and help contribute to stabilizing our pelvis and spine during upright movements.

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How Physical Therapy Can Help with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Those suffering from Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) can experience debilitating pain as well as physical and emotional stress. In this article, we’ll cover what IBD is, specific symptoms and how physical therapy (PT) can help.

What is Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD)?

Mayo Clinic describes IBD as “an umbrella term used to describe disorders that involve chronic inflammation of your digestive tract.” This includes Ulcerative Colitis and Crohn’s Disease.

What is Ulcerative Colitis?

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic disease of the large intestine in which the innermost lining of the colon becomes inflamed and develops tiny open sores or ulcers.

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Aging and the Pelvic Floor: How Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation Can Help

Getting older comes with many bodily changes. Your hormones begin to fluctuate, your muscles begin to change, and the pathways in your brain no longer regenerate at the same speed they once did. 

Your pelvic floor will also respond to these changes in your body as you age. However, if you choose to seek out pelvic floor rehabilitation, you may not have to endure the symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction. Pelvic floor physical therapy can help limit or in some cases completely resolve symptoms ensuring you can get back to the everyday activities you love. 

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Men Can Benefit from Pelvic Floor PT, Too

More often than not, you hear about women needing to strengthen their pelvic floor muscles to live a happier life. Men, however, face many of the same symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction that women do. Even so, can men benefit from pelvic floor physical therapy?

What is the Pelvic Floor?

The pelvic floor, in men and in women, looks similar to a hammock. It stretches from the tailbone to the hips in both genders and supports the bladder,

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How Can Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy Help with Bladder Control? 

Pregnancy changes a woman’s body in many ways she can’t anticipate. The release of pregnancy hormones can make it even more difficult for women to exert bowel and bladder control leading to urinary or other types of incontinence. 

To avoid this urinary “inconvenience”, doctors may prescribe pelvic floor physical therapy. This practice is designed to help women strengthen the pelvic floor either during or after pregnancy. That said, women who are not pregnant but who experience even occasional leaks or have difficulty holding back gas also find pelvic floor therapy helpful. 

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