The Pelvic Floor and Injury Prevention

One of the first moments Katie became interested in pelvic floor physical therapy was when she was treating women in their 60s and 70s with chronic low back and hip and other "traditional" orthopedic issues.  In conversations, it started to become clear that many of them had had postpartum issues such as incontinence, prolapse or pelvic pain that was never treated.  At the time, she wasn't trained to evaluate the pelvic floor, but started wondering if there was a connection.

The pelvic floor is an important muscle group. It has many jobs, including offering stability to our entire body. It is a part of our "core" muscle group, along with our deep abdominals and low back muscles. If these women had pelvic floor issues that had existed since they had given birth decades earlier...could this be part of the cause of the low back and hip issues that she was currently treating them for?

Now that she has been treating pelvic floors for many years the answer to that is a very obvious-- YES! 

At Transition, patients generally come to see us for the very real, current pelvic floor issues like pelvic pain, constipation, incontinence, and prolapse that are affecting their day to day lives.  While that is definitely our focus for the treatments, we also try to stress the long term benefits of what we are doing. 

Teaching people to breathe correctly, connect to their pelvic floors, strengthen their cores and maintain good postures are all important in the "now" but these skills will also allow their bodies to work as efficiently as possible into the future.  When we approach the body while working with patients, that's always my general focus- making the body work efficiently so that it can better heal, and limit compensations that may lead to future injuries. 

So when you ask yourself "Should I see a pelvic floor PT, even if my problems aren't that bad?"...we bet you know our answer.

Not only will it help you with your "small" problem now, but it will help prevent bigger issues into the future.  

Win-win. 

#pelvicfloorphysicaltherapy #injuryprevention #coreconnection #pelvicflooriscore