How do these relate?
?????????
The official definition of pain is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage.”
?????????
Did you catch that?
?????????
Pain has an emotional connection. Does this mean that your pain is all in your head? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But pain does not always provide accurate information on the health of your tissues. If your pain has been persistent for over 3 months, your central nervous system (CNS) may be playing a big part in your pain response.
?????????
The CNS and the sensation of pain
?????????
This weekend I’ve been taking my Pelvic Floor Therapist Level 3 course to learn more about all the different types of pelvic pain, including pain with sex, to help my patients. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing the role of the central nervous system and how pain lives in the body. One of the main takeaways of this was the role of central sensitization which is the amplification of your nerve signals within your CNS which is causing your hypersensitivity to pain. In basic terms, your nerves are firing when they shouldn’t be or sending more signals than they should.
?????????
If you’re living with chronic pelvic pain, please know you don’t have to! There are so many things you can do to fix this. Set up an appointment with me so we can get to the root of your pain and get you back to enjoying your life the way you want to!
Category: Pelvic Floor
Incontinence and the Pelvic Floor
FALSE
A weak pelvic floor is when the muscles in your pelvic floor are unable to contract enough to hold up your pelvic organs or control your bladder and bowels the way you would want to. An overactive pelvic floor is when your muscles are so tight, they are unable to relax and contract normally and cannot contract further when you are trying to hold in your urine. Picture a spring that is tightly coiled; there is no more space for it to compress no matter how hard you try. This is how a hypertonic pelvic floor leads to incontinence. For a muscle to be functional, it must be able to both contract and relax, just like any other muscle in your body.
What Am I Looking For?
Signs that you may have an overactive pelvic floor include: pelvic pain, painful sex, urinary incontinence, urinary frequency, incomplete emptying of your bladder, hesitancy or delayed start of stream, constipation or straining.
How Does This Happen?
There’s not one cause, several activities can lead to a tight pelvic floor. It could be due to excessive exercise, holding in your stomach, holding your bladder when you’re out, high stress levels that cause overall tension, IBS, vulvodynia and endometriosis among others.
Will Kegals Help?
Kegals work to strengthen the pelvic floor. In this case the pelvic floor is already so tense that it will not help and may even worsen the pelvic dysfunction that you are experiencing.
If you think you might have might have an issue with your pelvic floor, book an appointment with me to find out.
The Need to Knows of Vaginismus
Have you heard of VAGINISMUS? This is a pain that you do not have to live with.
This is the umbrella term for the involuntary contraction of the pelvic floor when something tries to enter your vagina. This could be a tampon or a penis or anything in between. The pain experienced by those suffering from this also has a range from slight discomfort or tightness to a stabbing sensation that you can’t get through. This can lead women to avoid sexual intercourse out of fear, pain or failure of previous attempts.
What causes it?
The limbic system in our brains is responsible for perceiving our sensory information (touch) and controlling reactive bodily functions. In the case of vaginismus, the involuntary tightening of the pelvic floor muscles is due to an overreaction of the limbic system. This in turn can cause hypertonic (tight) pelvic floor muscles that are unable to relax to allow an object inside or hypersensitive nerve endings that become too stimulated upon touch.
As a Naturopath and a Pelvic Floor Therapist, I take a full body approach, assessing your pelvic floor muscles for dysfunction as well as looking for internal sources of inflammation and working with you on your emotional reaction to touch to get you back to enjoying your sex life or using a tampon, whichever is your goal!
The Female Pelvic Floor
Do you know what your pelvic floor does? Most of us don’t. It’s not something we think about until it’s not working quite right, then it has a BIG impact on your life.
Your pelvic floor is made up of a group muscles, ligaments and connective tissue that attaches from your pubic bone in the front, to your tailbone in the back, effectively creating a sling that holds and supports your pelvic organs. When functioning properly, your pelvic floor allows you to control your bladder and bowel, stabilizes your hip joints and also allows you to enjoy sex by optimizing your sexual sensation. It does this by dynamically relaxing and contracting along with your needs.
When your pelvic floor is not working at its best, you can experience pelvic pain, prolapses, urinary incontinence or dyspareunia (painful sex). After major life events your pelvic floor can change; read menopause or having a baby, but it can be retrained to get you back to you.
Pelvic Floor Therapy combined with Naturopathic Medicine is uniquely fit to make you forget about your pelvic floor all over again.