Pelvic Pain Awareness Month

May is pelvic pain awareness month. This month our clinic will feature blogs about various pelvic pain conditions.

What is Pelvic Pain?

Pelvic pain is the generic term given to any pain within the abdomen and pelvis. Pain can refer to the lower back, buttocks and/or thighs. This term encompasses a vast number of medical conditions so the frustration is understandable when anyone suffering from pelvic pain is given this diagnosis and sent on their way with a script for medication.

Pelvic Health Practitioners

Pelvic conditions are often successfully managed using a multidisciplinary approach: a pelvic pain specialist (MD), a pelvic floor physical therapist, and a psychologist/counselor. Unfortunately there remains a stigma with seeking help for mental/emotional issues. It’s surprising just how impactful pelvic pain can have on mental health. Clinically there is carryover seen between overcoming emotional/psychological barriers and soft tissue tightness (muscles, fascia) for pelvic floor conditions.

Symptoms

Pelvic pain can be very specific to a particular activity causing pain. Clients may pinpoint to one particular spot in the pelvic cavity and report pain occurring only with urination or orgasm. Pain can also be quite generalized and felt over the entire abdominal and pelvic region. Two people diagnosed with the exact same thing such as endometriosis can report very different pain patterns and sometimes this can change significantly over the course of a menstrual cycle. Some pain is emotionally driven (anxiety, fear) and increases dramatically. For example pain with intercourse (dyspareunia) can be extreme at any one point or throughout the entire sexual encounter. For this reason expect some intimate questions at your evaluation. The pelvic floor physical therapist uses clues within your answers to determine exactly which structures are affected and how the plan of care should proceed.

Pelvic Health PT

One well known pelvic floor physical therapist always joked in lectures that for the pelvic floor a ‘playground’ was created in between two ‘trash chutes’. Fortunately the physical therapy pelvic floor specialty has evolved to treat the ‘playground’ and both ‘trash chutes’ successfully. Body Harmony Physical Therapy specializes in treating using manual therapy, neuromuscular re-education, postural re-education, rehabilitative realtime ultrasound, relaxation techniques and diaphragmatic breathing, manual lymph drainage, low-pressure fitness and therapeutic exercises.

Written by: Keely Faridi, PT