About the Book

• Bring awareness to "what is the pelvic floor," its importance in urinary, bowel, and sexual function
• Curing pelvic pain, incontinence, IBS, bladder, bowel, and sexual disorders
• It can be mistaken for SO many other things
• Relieving pain in an 'intimate' area
• Surgery and drugs are usually NOT the answer if it is a musculoskeletal disorder
• ENHANCING your sex life (through the elder years, too!!)
• Its effect on men, women, and children and during and after pregnancy
• A program of stretching, strengthening, massage, nutrition, and self-care (home spa) to heal pelvic floor dysfunction

Pelvic floor dysfunction is a disorder in the muscles and/or nerves of the pelvic floor, or in surrounding skeletal structure. It is extremely common to have a dysfunction in the pelvic floor: whether it be urinary, bowel, or sexual dysfunction in men, women, and children, as evidenced in the statistics below:

STATISTICS

Pain

• Every woman has at least a five percent chance of suffering from chronic pelvic pain, and 9.2 million women today suffer pelvic pain that has not been properly diagnosed; treatment of these complaints, typically unsuccessful, carries a price tag of $881.5 million in outpatient costs per year—not to mention the costs to patients' daily functioning, their marriages, or relationships, and their ability to work…
• FOR MEN: 5-16% of male office visits are for chronic prostatitis; 95% of those patients suffer from pelvic floor dysfunction

Incontinence

• 46 percent of postmenopausal women suffer from some form of incontinence; the condition aggravates with age, while ageing may also increase the strain and pain of evacuation…
• As many as 38 percent of women engaging in high-impact athletics—running, aerobics, tennis—experience incontinence during the athletic activity…
• 42 percent of pregnant women complain of "leaking," and 38 percent still complain of it eight weeks after delivery…

Sex

• 43 percent of women report some form of sexual dysfunction, including pain during intercourse, a condition that afflicts at least two million women…

THE CURE

This book offers relief and recovery—not through surgery and not through drugs, but through strengthening, stretching and relaxation exercises, manual techniques, biofeedback, deep massage, heat and cold, and the other modalities of physical therapy.

The pelvic floor is still considered "not a fit topic for conversation"—namely, the pelvis: specifically, the muscles that form the floor of the pelvis and the intimate bodily functions these muscles support.

There is still minimal awareness, even among the medical establishment, of the power of the pelvic floor (and the musculoskeletal aspects that NEED, but are usually not diagnosed by Md's) to improve health and life—and conversely, of a weakened pelvic floor to harm both. They are unaware of the potential of physical therapy to ameliorate those conditions. Certainly, it is understandable that specialists in urology, gynecology, colorectal medicine, and gastroenterology, when consulted about patients' symptoms, will look to their own area of specialist expertise and will diagnose and prescribe treatment accordingly. However, more often than not, the disorder is of musculoskeletal origin and they need to see a physical therapist and do the exercises in this book!!!

PELVIC FLOOR TALK

I talk about the pelvic floor all the time. As one of the pioneer physical therapists specializing in pelvic floor dysfunctions, I have been treating patients afflicted with these disorders for over a decade. I have seen how the exercises and therapies I prescribe—breathing, relaxing, strengthening, stretching, toning, diet—do not just heal the disorders but can prevent them from occurring. At the same time, these exercises and therapies can ward off the effects of ageing while enhancing patients' lives immeasurably.

One of the ongoing tasks of my practice is to address physicians in these and other specialties about the disorders they might be seeing that can be treated—have been successfully treated—by physical therapy. These presentations are one of the main reasons I talk about the pelvic floor all the time.

The audience is becoming much more receptive. The better informed health care consumers are less and less willing to pop pills that may produce side-effects worse than the cure or to undergo costly and irrevocable surgeries. They are increasingly interested in healing themselves through exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle behavior, and they claim they are ready to do the work such healing may require. There are still far too many people who find it difficult to tell even their doctors that they have pain "there," or trouble with urination or defecation, or—most intimate of all—a problem with sex. Even worse, their doctors may not ask.

Some Typical Pelvic Floor Dysfunctions

That Exercise and Other Physical Therapies Can Help Heal
(In men, women, and children)

• various forms of vulvar pain (vulvodynia, vestibulitis)
• vaginismus—muscle tension preventing penetration of the vagina
• pelvic and/or groin pain (CPP-chronic pelvic pain)
• pelvic inflammatory disease
• pain from endometriosis
• irritable bowel syndrome and colitis (including constipation and diarrhea)
• interstitial cystitis
• urinary or bowel incontinence
• urinary or bowel urgency, frequency, or retention
• feeling of fullness/abdominal pressure and/or pain
• urethral or rectal spasms, burning, pain, or itching
• pre-natal and post-partum pelvic pain
• pelvic pain secondary to mal-alignment, muscle spasm, stress, or adhesions
• difficulty with conception: infertility or pelvic congestion
• non-bacterial prostatitis in men

This book offers relief and recovery—not through surgery and not through drugs, but through strengthening, stretching and relaxation exercises, manual techniques, biofeedback, deep massage, heat and cold, and the other modalities of physical therapy.

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