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Women's Sexual Health -
Pain
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Written by Amy Stein, M.P.T.
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Wednesday, 14 January 2009 |
 Amy Stein is regular contributor to Vibrance Associates sites and their forums. Rather than excerpt a single chapter from her new book, Ms. Stein has chosen information from various chapters to share from her book, Heal Pelvic Pain: The Proven Stretching, Strengthening and Nutrition Program for Relieving Pain, Incontinence, I.B.S. and other Symptoms without Surgery (McGraw Hill, 2008) Published with permission. This is the first of four parts.
musculoskeletal tissue. That’s the vicious circle at work again. If the irritation persists, the muscle tightens and shortens, and that in turn causes more irritation and more pain.
Typically, the person will try to relieve the irritation by urinating. If this happens enough, the brain learns to accompany the irritation with the need to urinate. Eventually, the person gets tired of the frequent trips to the bathroom and will try to hold it in. That tightens the pelvic floor muscles, and those muscles shorten and tighten even more. And that, in turn, acts like a belt tightening around the bladder, giving the person the feeling of needing to urinate even when the bladder is not full. So the vicious circle is simply exacerbated.
Bowel Disorders. Common symptoms of abnormal bowel function in both men and women sound a lot like bladder discomfort: frequency, urgency, retention, spasms, pressure, difficulty with initiation, incontinence. But to these we must add gas, constipation, diarrhea, inflammatory bowel, and irritable bowel syndrome. The effect of these disorders ranges from the extremely unpleasant to the intensely painful. Inflammations of the bowel can affect all layers of the intestine and rectum, while the group of symptoms involved in irritable bowel syndrome can cause considerable abdominal pain.
What’s more, most of these disorders can produce increased toxins in the gut, which in turn irritates the surrounding tissues, including the musculoskeletal tissue. As with bladder irritations, persistent irritation may tighten and shorten the muscles, which will create more irritation and more pain—not just in the pelvis but through the abdomen, back, legs, and buttocks.
Of course, any of these disorders can limit your daily activity. And the worse the resulting pain, the less active and social you become, and the more homebound and inactive your life.
(End of part one. Part two, of four, discusses The Impact: What Pelvic Floor Disorders Can Do to You) to discuss this with Ms. Stein click here to enter our forums.)
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Last Updated ( Friday, 13 November 2009 )
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