Pelvic and Women's Health
We treat a range of women’s health conditions including antenatal and postnatal physio, pelvic pain during pregnancy, pelvic floor weakness, chronic pelvic pain, painful periods, chronic constipation, perimenopausal and menopausal symptoms and urinary incontinence.
Certain pelvic floor problems can lead to other injuries including lower back pain and hip pain. It is important to do a thorough assessment to find the source of the problem and treat any weaknesses that may be contributing to troublesome symptoms.
Urinary Incontinence
Urinary incontinence is an involuntary leakage of urine.
This can happen to men, women and children. There are two types of urinary
incontinence, stress incontinence and urgency incontinence. You could also have
a combination of the two which is called mixed urinary incontinence.
Each type of incontinence is treated in different ways so
during the initial assessment you will be asked questions to help determine
which type you have.
Statistically, urinary incontinence affects one in three
women, and recent studies of women in their pregnancies discovered that 25% of
women reported leaking urine even before they became pregnant.
There has been a lot of research done into the most
effective treatment for stress and urgency urinary incontinence. Physiotherapy
has been shown to improve symptoms in up to 80% of women who struggle with
these issues.
Stress Urinary Incontinence:
This is predominantly a muscle problem. It can happen when the pelvic floor muscles are under stress, for example, jumping, running, sneezing and coughing. Your physiotherapist will guide you through pelvic floor muscle strengthening and control exercises to help alleviate your symptoms.
Urgency Urinary Incontinence:
This is related to the fluid you consume and the timing of when you consume it. It also relates to the control you have over the bladder itself. Your physiotherapist will work with you to help identify possible triggers and inform you of necessary changes you can make to your daily routine and techniques to help learn to control your bladder.
Women's Health Assessment
During your assessment your physiotherapist will ask a lot of questions about how this problem impacts your life and help to discover possible triggers.
In order to select the best treatment for you, a full assessment will take place first. This can involve assessing posture, back and hip movement and strength, breathing patterns and pelvic floor muscles.
The assessment of the pelvic floor muscles may include an internal exam. This is something that can be discussed with your women’s health physiotherapist during the initial examination. It helps us to get a better understanding of the cause of your symptoms. However, there are alternatives to an internal exam that can be discussed as needed.
Physiotherapy Treatment for Women's Health
- Pelvic floor muscle exercises can help to treat a lot of women’s health problems. This can include education and breath work to learn how to isolate the pelvic floor muscles, strengthen the muscles, stretch the muscles or learn how to encourage them to relax when needed.
- There are different gadgets that can be used to help train your pelvic floor muscles including EMG biofeedback and electrical muscle stimulation devices. Other devices can be used to help with pain conditions such as TENS. The benefits and ways of using these can be discussed during your appointment. (images)
- We also offer pregnancy (antenatal) Pilates classes to help with prevention of injuries and preparing your body for childbirth. These can be done in a class setting or a 1:1 session.
