I have had this question so often… how do I know if I need to relax my pelvic floor muscles?

So, let’s talk about what that means and who needs to be doing that.

First, the pelvic floor muscles again support organs, control sphincters (pee, poop), they stabilize the spine/pelvis and everything that attaches to the pelvis and spine, they help with healthy sexual function, they allow for good circulation through the pelvis. The pelvic floor muscles don’t just do the lifting contraction also known as a kegel.

So, you may have found on social media and through Google searches that it’s important to relax the pelvic floor muscles. What does that mean?

Relaxing the pelvic floor simply means that you know how to lengthen or elongate the pelvic floor muscles so that you can have good bladder emptying and bowel emptying, allow for penetrative intercourse, good stability of the spine and pelvis, and allow for a delivery of baby vaginally.

The reason why this is so important is otherwise you might struggle with constipation, urinary leakage and pelvic pain, including pain while sitting, walking, moving, and pain with penetrative intercourse or the use of tampons or menstrual cups.

Women and men alike struggle with overactive or hypertonic pelvic floor muscles.

Who needs to relax the pelvic floor muscles?

The people that need to relax the pelvic floor muscles are struggling with some of these problems:

Pain prior to bowel movements and relief of pain after

Constipation, which means firm stools almost like pebbles, difficulty getting out your stool.

Urinary leakage or urgency of having to use the bathroom and frequency.

People with interstitial cystitis

People with vulvodynia,

Tailbone pain

Pain in the testicles, penis or vulva.

It’s so important to get assessed by a pelvic physical therapist when you’re struggling with any of these issues. Again, a pelvic physical therapist is one that assesses the entire body, and assesses the pelvic floor muscles internally and externally.

If you see a general orthopedic physical therapist that does not assess these muscles, you are not going to fix the problem efficiently. It may take longer and you may not get full resolution.

If you don’t struggle within these problems, lengthening the pelvic floor is still important to do.

First to avoid any of the above problems from happening.

How do you lengthen the pelvic floor muscles?  

Some of the ways to do that are going through different types of exercise. Squats are phenomenal for strengthening but also lengthening or relaxing the pelvic floor muscles. So I always tell clients to squat!

Exercising the body is a great way to not only exercise your heart, your brain, your bones, and joints, but also a really great way to maintain great pelvic floor, health and strength. And do not focus on doing “Ab work”.

Another key thing is always to stay hydrated, drinking enough water. Making sure to drink half of your body weight in fluid ounces.

Certain hip opening and rib cage mobility exercises found in yoga, pilates or stretching programs can help.

In conclusion… 

If you have ever been told to just relax the pelvic floor muscles, it may not be something you can control and resolve on your own, and is just poor advice!!  So trying to do these things at home without getting an assessment, again can lengthen the duration in which it might take to resolve your symptoms. A pelvic physical therapy can give you better answers to what is causing your tight pelvic floor muscles.

So, we offer free consultation to see if you’re a good fit for pelvic physical therapy here with us. We would love to hear from you!

Looking at your poop, it’s important! When we know what our poop looks like and when we FEEL GOOD emptying our poops we generally feel better, overall!  Pelvic physical therapy is very helpful in managing constipation and leaking poop, and other conditions listed below. The reason is that your stool or poop empties through the colon and through the pelvic floor muscles!

So my question to you is have you ever been referred to a pelvic physical therapist for pooping? 

Oftentimes the answer is going to be a what?! And if you’ve been to a Pelvic Physical Therapist and you haven’t talked about your poops, keep reading for some tips and reasons that are often not discussed enough with your Gastroenterologist, GI Doc. And if the Pelvic Physical Therapist didn’t talk about poops, they were missing the big picture. 

So let’s talk about what poop looks like. Healthy poops have a soft and formed consistency to help you fully empty your colon. The color of your poop will range from brown to green to in between shades depending on what you eat. If you see black stool, yellow and loose, red stool, you should make an appointment with your Primary Care Physician or GI Physician, 

There are different types of stool you can have; this is called the Bristol stool scale. They can vary from pellets to loose, to soft & formed. 

Where do you think your poop is most days? I am giving you permission to look at your poop, no it’s not gross. It’s very important to know!! Especially if you struggle with any of the conditions below. 

Pelvic physical therapy can help with the following conditions related to poop: 

• •  Constipation
  •  Pain  with pooping, before pooping, and after pooping
  •  Fecal smearing
  •  Leaking poop
  •  Hemorrhoids
  •  Pelvic pain prior to pooping

Pelvic physical therapy will help address the mechanics of how you are pooping in regards to your muscles & joints, to the way you breathe, to the way you sit on the toilet. We are also going to address bowel habits, these are techniques throughout the day to help regulate bowel movements. 

But most importantly Pelvic Physical Therapy is going to address your entire body, we want to know what’s going on with your posture of your spine, your movement through your spine, your abdominal and core muscles and the status of your pelvic floor muscles! What’s going on with your pelvic floor muscles — is there discoordination, pain, weakness, increased tension in your pelvic floor muscles, or difficulty relaxing your pelvic floor. Your colon could be hyposensitive or hypersensitive too… lots of factors you can see. And they will be individual to you! 

Oftentimes when you have a poop issue you taking a guess at what is the cause of why you are having a bowel or poop issue. The other reason why poops are so important is it tells us a lot about our gut health, our vulvar/vaginal (for women) health, and can be a good indicator of where our sexual health is! If you are having a poop issue it can really affect your libido, sex drive and comfort with sexual intimacy. 

Poop and vulva health you ask? Well if we poop in a healthy way then we have a gut that is healthy and happy— which means our pH balance is in a good place which in turn means… drum roll, our pH of our vulva is happy and healthy with good bacteria. That is a topic for another blog post of course! 

Here are a few tips to help with poops: 

• • Getting a good position could include the use of a Squatty Potty, or how you position yourself while you sit on the toilet.
  • Your breath during a bowel movement, you will want to breathe in deep and exhale with a variety of different noises a few examples could be S sound (Sneaky Snake S),  G sound, F sound, “Shh” sound, angry cat growl— making your belly BIG. 

Sound interesting and intriguing? If you, or someone you know, is struggling with any poop issue, we have your back! We are excited to offer free phone consultation. Give us a call if you have questions about how pelvic physical therapy can help you with your pelvic condition.