What Can Be Treated At Pelvic PT - Episode 3
In this episode, I discuss the 5 groups of dysfunction that Pelvic Physical Therapy can help with.
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[00:00] Dr. Kari : You. Welcome to the Moron Pelvic Health Podcast. Hi, I'm your host, Dr. Carrie Roberts. On this show, we will be discussing a variety of things regarding your pelvic health. These conversations will be a mix of education, personal experiences, and a blend of tips you can apply to have a healthier pelvis. The goal of this show is to normalize conversations around pelvic health and help women stop suffering in silence. You. Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I am answering the question that I get asked the most, more than anything else, what can be treated in pelvic physical therapy? Today we're going to talk about all of the things that can be treated in pelvic physical therapy. And it's a lot. So I'm going to narrow it down to five buckets just to kind of keep it simple. So the first main bucket, I'll tell you what the buckets are and then we'll kind of dive into it a little bit and then we'll do a little wrap up. So the first main bucket that public physical therapy helps with is any sort of bowel issues. The second bucket is bladder issues. The third bucket is prenatal and postpartum care. The fourth bucket is the sexual issues and the fifth one is pelvic pain. So those are the five major buckets that physical therapy for pelvic health can help with. Now, I will say pelvic health physical therapists are as I learned from my mentor, she says it well, I want to give credit where credit is do. I heard this first from Nicole Kozine and I love that. We are physical therapists first. We are orthopedic physical therapist second, and then we are pelvic physical therapist third. So a pelvic floor physical therapist is really good with bones and joints. And you could ask her about neck pain, shoulder pain, foot pain, ankle pain, back pain, and she is more than or he is more than equipped to help you care for all of those things. So just because you see someone in the pelvic health arena doesn't mean that you can't ask them about other aches and pains that you might have. Because I'm sure your physical therapist has gone through extensive training and has all kinds of experience treating a wide variety of things. So I just wanted to put that up there first. Now let's kind of go into these buckets. The first bucket, which is near and dear to my heart, is bladder issues, bladder dysfunction. So whenever you hear that term dysfunction, it just means when something is functioning in a way that it shouldn't be, it's just not working quite the way we would like it to. Doesn't mean that you're broken, might mean that something just might have to be tweaked. But bladder dysfunction can have a host of things that can impact you on a daily basis for some women, sometimes multiple times a day. But women that have and men, I say women because I only treat women in my practice. But this information is for the general public, for general information in general. So this refers to men, women and children. So bladder frequency and urine, sorry, bladder frequency and urgency are things that can be addressed in pelvic physical therapy. Some people deal with pelvic pain excuse me, bladder pain, which is something that I unfortunately know all too well about. If you're not familiar with that, go back to listen to episode one because I will go down the whole rabbit tunnel of my bladder pain experience and recovery. And then also if you're having difficulty fully emptying your bladder. So those are just a snapshot of things that could be addressed by a pelvic health physical therapist. Now, if we jump on over into the bowel bucket, people that deal with intermittent or even chronic constipation, that's something that we can definitely help here in pelvic physical therapy, as well as incontinence. So we can help with incontinence with the bladder, but we can also help with incontinence with the bowels as well. And just like the bladder, if you have difficulty emptying your bowels for a variety of reasons, pelvic physical therapy can help you with that as well. The third bucket is everything pertaining to mom and baby. So that's going to be our prenatal care with any issues that happen while you're pregnant, as well as postpartum care, which is anything that we can help with after you've given birth to your baby, whether it be by C section or vaginally. So if you have had a C section, we deal a lot with scar management. We are excellent with helping people overcome issues that are associated with scar issues. Something else we can help with is a lot of women have pelvic pubic, si, joint pain, hip pain, abdominal pain during pregnancy and after pregnancy. So those are things that we can help with. And also, if you've ever heard of the term DRA, I pronounce it diastasis recti. People pronounce medical terminology differently, but it's basically when the abdominal muscle spreads apart when you are pregnant and then after the pregnancy, it doesn't always come together. You might notice some coning, a little bit of space or gapping in your abdominal wall that is DRA. And physical therapist with pelvic floor specialty are excellent with treating things like that. Our next bucket is the sexual bucket or our sexual dysfunction bucket. So people, men and women that have issues with orgasms or they have pelvic pain during sexual encounters, or for women, if you have pain with penetration, this is even common with or not common, but this could even happen while you're getting an exam at the Gynecologist's office or inserting a tampon or menstrual cup. So any kind of penetration that causes vaginal pain is something that we can deal with in pelvic physical therapy and then any sort of genitalia pain. Some people have pain around their genitalia when they're sitting, when they're riding a bike, maybe during intercourse, maybe not. But all of those things are dysfunctions pain processes that we can help with in pelvic physical therapy. And then the last bucket is just your general pelvic pain. I say general pelvic pain because there's so much that can go with this. Pain in your lower back, pain in the pubic area towards the front, below your abdomen, pain around your hip joints, si pain, people that have it, band pain, pelvic organ prolapse, which I didn't really know where to put it, so I just put it in the pain category, even though I know that there's not always pain associated with that. So, as you can see, there's a wide variety of things that pelvic physical therapists can help you with. And if you have one or two of these, then reach out. I'm just a click away. If you want to email me, you can send me an email. If you want to, you can DM me on Instagram. And then I also do provide virtual visits as well as in person. So if you wanted to possibly get seen and we can set up something virtually. If you're not local to the Atlanta area, that's fine. If you want to set up something in person, that's okay. I do provide free phone consultations to help you figure out if this is a road that you want to go on. So again, there are wide variety of things that pelvic physical therapy can help with. To review it again, bladder issues, bowel issues, prenatal and postpartum issues, sexual issues, and just hip pain in general, as well as the separation of the abdominal wall, which is DRA. diastsis recti, and any sort of pelvic organ prolapse. So if you're concerned or want to speak to a specialist about that, please reach out to me, and I will be back next week with another episode. Thank you for listening to the Marron Pelvic health Podcast. If you want to take the quiz to see if you would benefit from speaking to a Pelvic health physical therapist, simply go to the link in the description or go to www.moronepelvichealth.com quiz. Again, thank you so much for listening to the podcast. And don't forget to tune in next week for another amazing episode.