Worn out and ready for a trade-in…where’s the spare parts bin? That’s how you feel when you’ve got a chronic musculoskeletal issue like tendinopathy. Maybe you’re an over-sixty wishing your body would hold up as strong as your mind. Maybe you’ve just hit forty and living proof of that cliché that the body starts to fall [...]
Three gut-wrenching clinical scenarios: one, the postmenopausal patient with soul-destroying faecal incontinence you just can’t get a handle on. Two, the young woman with IBS, sentenced to a frugal restricted diet and miserably lacking in social life because she reacts to everything she eats. Three, the man not even forty whose colonoscopy just showed 47 polyps, staring down the barrel of twice-yearly colonoscopies for the foreseeable [...]
Your first patient (prolapse) has chronic constipation, with bowels about as lively as an overstuffed armchair. Your second patient (faecal incontinence) has chronic diarrhoea, and every medical investigation under the sun comes up with a shoulder shrug.*Everyone knows you should increase fibre in constipation.* (Except when increasing fibre causes worse problems…) *In chronic diarrhoea, more fibre would logically be the last thing the patient needs.* (Except when fibre is the therapeutic solution…) Holy [...]
Pop quiz for pelvic physios: what is the common denominator in these patient presentations? (These are all real patients, but I bet you feel like you have seen them too!) 30-something woman plagued with recurrent thrush and BV (bacterial vaginosis). 30-something woman who had vaginal Group B strep during pregnancy and persistent bladder irritation after. 60-something [...]
Skating can be brilliant exercise for your pelvic floor for so many reasons, which you can read about in Part 1 of this blog post. BUT! (There is always a but!) Inline skating (or “rollerblading”) can be a good choice for assisting your pelvic floor rehab, BUT ideally under these three conditions… You have [...]
Ah, skating, whether inline, roller or ice….such a hypnotic exercise…even if you’re only watching! There are not many forms of exercise that give you that feeling of flow. It’s so mesmerizing you just don’t want to stop the flow… Did someone say “stop the flow”? Speaking of “stop the flow”, let’s talk about the [...]
Birth trauma: this is what it’s called when a woman suffers distress with a difficult birth associated with pain, sorrow or loss, leaving her vulnerable to long-term psychological effects. How to love your body after birth trauma is probably the last thing on your mind at this point. Seeking psychological care and support is [...]
Traumatic birth can affect you both mentally and physically. The physical aspects of traumatic birth are varied, and include painful stitches, perineal swelling, wound infection, and loss of bladder or bowel control or prolapse of your internal organs (both of which can be immediate, or not show up until later). Later, when you try [...]
Recovery after birth trauma isn’t easy. It probably won’t happen spontaneously. Waiting to see what happens rarely gets you where you want to be as fast as you want to get there. The psychological effects of birth trauma are significant and extremely important to address, but what I want to focus on here are [...]
A traumatic birth can be cataclysmic. To describe a traumatic birth as a cataclysm may sound overly dramatic to some, but in reality it is deadly accurate. A cataclysm is an event that causes significant destruction or a sudden, violent change, and a traumatic birth matches both of these definitions. There are many forms [...]
