Hey Readers!
Our next installment of Mama’s 101 is coming your way on September 19th! Join Rachel Clausen PT, DPT as she details how to optimize your birth! The class will be held at our Downtown location register here.
Details:
Dates: September 19th, at 6pm
Location: 156 Williams Street Suite 800, NY, NY 10038
On September 18th, at 7pm we will be kicking off our fall semester of pelvic health education class, we call Pelvic Health 101 (PH101). In our first class we will be introducing you to the pelvic floor muscles, where they are, what they do, and how they relate to the health and function of your bowel, bladder, and sexual functioning. We will also be covering how things such as alignment, posture, muscle tone and nerves can affect your symptoms. This course is a great starting point to help you understand your pelvic floor and pelvic floor symptoms.
Please join us at our office at:
110 East 42nd Street, Suite 1504
New York, NY 10017
Register at: pelvichealth101.eventbrite.com
Here is our line up of this and future classes
Fiona McMahon PT, DPT
It’s back to school time! Many of us look back at this time fondly. Reminiscing about the joy of picking out new notebooks, meeting new friends, and trying to put together a perfect back to school look (any 90’s kids remember the Delia*s catalog?) But if you are a kid or a parent dealing with a kid with urinary accidents, the idea of going back to school can be downright terrifying. In this blog, we will go through the causes of urinary incontinence as well as treatments. Here’s the thing, if you only have time to just skim this blog, I want you to know this: Urinary accidents are not your fault, nor your child’s and there are solutions out there to help improve accidents. So keep your and your kiddo’s heads up. It can get better.
In the spirit of back to school, we will start off this blog with some definitions. We can classify bladder accidents in many different ways, which can be helpful when it comes to selecting a course of treatment. Here are ways the medical community may classify your child’s incontinence
Intermittent versus Continuous: Intermittent applies to children who are having discrete individual episodes of incontinence, rather than continuous loss of urine from the bladder. The latter is more suggestive of neurological or anatomical impairment and does require a physician’s attention right away.
Intermittent incontinence can be further classified as primary or secondary. Primary incontinence occurs in children over 5 who have never achieved continence, whereas secondary incontinence occurs in kiddos who have had continence previously for a period of 6 months or more.
Urge Incontinence: Occurs when when a child has a sudden urge to urinate and cannot make it to the potty in time. It is a type of intermittent incontinence.
Stress Incontinence: Occurs when kiddos lose continence with activities like coughing, laughing, and sneezing. It is a type of intermittent incontinence.
Eneuresis or Nighttime Incontinence as the name would imply, this is intermittent urinary incontinence that occurs at night.
So here’s the thing, your child may experience just one type of incontinence or they may experience many types, (i.e. urge, stress, and bedwetting). Regardless of the type of incontinence your child is experiencing, they are not alone. Bedwetting is experienced in nearly 5%-10% of 7 year olds and daytime incontinence is experienced by 5-15 percent of kiddos between 5- 9 years old. It can be helpful to share this fact with your kiddo when they feel alone and isolated. Let them know that there may be several people in their class experiencing the exact same symptoms.
What Causes Incontinence in Kiddos?
In most kiddos, it is rarely one thing exclusively. One of the most common causes of incontinence at BBPT is constipation. The rectum and the bladder are neighbors sandwiched between two relatively immobile bones, the pubic bone in front and the sacrum in back. When a child, or an adult is constipated the rectum can become distended, like a big ol’ balloon. When the rectum is full of poo it squishes the poor little bladder leaving very little room for pee to collect before a child has to go. Furthermore, all that junk in the pelvic floor reduces the feeling that it’s time to go until it is much too late. Even a child that is pooping daily may be constipated. How can that be you may ask? Well, kiddos that are constipated may actually be incompletely evacuating resulting in a build up of stool in the abdomen. Signs besides bowel frequency that your child may be constipated include, abdominal pain, large painful bowel movements, itchy tushes, or even poo accidents. If you are still unsure, some doctors may do an abdominal x-ray to confirm the presence of large amounts of backed up poo in the abdomen
The pelvic floor is another huge player in urinary issues. The pelvic floor refers to the group of muscles between the pubic bone in front and the tailbone in the back. These muscles help regulate the flow of pee and poo out. Sometimes these muscles are too loose to hold everything in. Often times they actually may be too tight, which can lead to constipation, incomplete urination, and believe it or not, these muscles may also be too weak to hold in waste during play!
We see other factors linked to pediatric incontinence. Keep in mind these factors are correlated with incontinence and may not be necessarily causal. Kinda like a chicken and the egg situation. One may have caused the other or one may have no effect on the other. With correlations, it is often impossible to tell. Here are factors found in the research that have been linked with urinary incontinence in kiddos:
What to do About Pee Accidents
We have established that having urinary accidents as a child is pretty common. So the first thing to do, and I’m serious here, is remind yourself and your kiddo that you are not alone and that it is not your fault. Keep saying it until it sinks in. Potty issues can come with the extra burden of guilt and shame. Let it go. It is no longer serving you or your kiddo.
Now, it’s time to get the ball rolling. Although childhood incontinence has a 15% spontaneous cure rate every year after age 7, it leaves out a whopping 85% of kiddos who deserve being able to play and go to fun activities like sleepovers without fear of accidents.
First, get yourself a proactive doctor who will screen for UTI’s. They often don’t show up the same way in kiddos as they do for adults. UTIs can cause incontinence and left untreated, they can be dangerous.
Then get yourself to a qualified pelvic floor physical therapist who has experience working with kids. A qualified pelvic floor physical therapist has the ability to assess the muscles of the pelvic floor in a non-invasive manner to see if weakness or tightness could be a potential culprit. They also are qualified to assess the abdomen to determine if backed up poo from constipation is worsening accidents. Based on what they find, they will taylor a program to help fix any potential barriers your child could be facing on their way to continence.
Things to do now:
Wrapping it up:
One more time for the people in the back. You are working so hard. I never met a family who is not trying everything for their kiddo. Incontinence is tough, but with PT and support it can get better. If trying these steps is not working for you, come see us.
Check out Amy’s book Heal Pelvic Pain, which includes a chapter on the pediatric pelvic floor.
Baird D, Seehusen D, Bode D. Enuresis in children: a case based approach. American Family Physician. 90(8) 2015
Maternik M, Krzeminska K, Zurowska A. The management of childhood urinary incontinence. Pediatr Nephrol (2015) 30:41-50
Vasconcelos M, East P, Blanco et al. Early behavioral risks for childhood and adolescent daytime urinary incontinence and nocturnal enuresis. J Behav Pediatric. 2017; 38 (9): 736-42
Von Gontard A, Kutwertz-Bröking. The diagnosis and treatment of enuresis and functional daytime incontinence. Dtsch Arztebl Int 2019; 116 279-85
Fiona McMahon PT, DPT, She, her, hers
You aren’t a zebra getting chased down by a lion on the Serengeti. You know that. But your body might not. Our modern day stress usually doesn’t involve us having to defend ourselves against wild animals. It often involves chronic seemingly unrelenting stress of work, relationships, and life. Stress, our perceived threats, chemically elicit the same type of response whether that is fending off a tiger or stressing over trying to care for your child while simultaneously crushing the game at work. These stress responses are governed by the sympathetic autonomic nervous system of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is a powerful system that governs virtually every function in our body to help optimize our responses to things we encounter day- to-day. It is essential to our survival. We can get into trouble if our stress response is perpetually turned on. You can’t fight or flight forever, we must transition out of that sympathetic nervous system back into our rest and digest system, the parasympathetic nervous system. In this blog we will go over the different parts of the ANS and how we can optimize it to live our healthiest and happiest lives.
Parasympathetic versus Sympathetic
In a perfect world our sympathetic and parasympathetic operate in concert to provide us with optimal functioning. When we go out for a run we need our sympathetic to quicken our heartbeat, stimulate glucose release from our liver, and allow us to sweat. After we finish our run and settle in for our post run snack, we need our parasympathetic to stimulate some saliva production, and get digestion started for us. See how the sympathetic and the parasympathetic can work perfectly together? Check out all the functions of the ANS below
Sympathetic Nervous System
Parasympathetic Nervous System
Health effects of stress
As you can see, the sympathetic nervous system provides us with some really important functions. But you can tell by looking at what it does for the body, that living in chronic sympathetic drive would be pretty uncomfortable. No one wants to walk around with their heart pounding and sweat pouring off their forehead. Beyond discomfort, chronic stress can deeply affect our health. Chronic stress can affect your immune system negatively making it harder for you to battle infections. Importantly for our pain patients, chronic stress can increase inflammatory chemicals called cytokines. This is important because that inflammation can actually make your pain worse. Chronic stress can also affect your digestion through a mechanism called the brain-gut-axis, which can affect how you absorb nutrients and the overall level of inflammation in your gut. You can listen to the details of how the autonomic nervous system can effect your gut on our Pelvic Messenger podcast.
Treatment
So you’ve read this far. You may now be feeling stress about being stressed, which definitely was not the intention of this blog post. Stress is part of life. Parents get sick, our kids get into trouble, money gets tight, life can be stressful. We simply cannot control events and the actions of other people that contribute to our stress. I call these things exogenous stressors, or stress that is occuring outside of ourselves. What we can attempt to control is how we react to those exogenous stressors.
That’s where mindfulness can be so helpful. Mindfulness can allow you to look at a problem without spiraling into extra stress. Let me give you an example. Say your boss gives you some negative feedback about a project at work. You can take the feedback at face value and use it as a tool to improve future projects or you can go down the rabbit hole. You can tell yourself that your boss not only didn’t like your performance on your project, but also doesn’t like you. You can create a narrative that you are inherently bad at your job, are on the verge of being fired, will not be able to afford to live in your house and so on and so on. The place you can take yourself in your mind can be so far from what actually happened. Travelling to those places can allow you to stress about things that haven’t happened or may never happen.
A way I personally learned mindfulness was through a smartphone app. I personally used Calm but 10% Happier, Buddify, and Headspace are also great. Getting into the practice of mindfulness takes… well… practice. I suggest giving it a full three weeks before throwing in the towel. There is no one cure for everyone and it is not a reflection on you, yourself personally if mindfulness is not your cup of tea.
Exercise is another great way to blow off some stress. Honestly, any exercise you do is good but throwing in some meditative movement practices to your repertoire can help up the returns you get from exercise. Meditative movement practices like Pilates, Yoga, Qi Gong, and Tai Chi have been shown to offer a host of benefits for the body and soul.
Here’s the thing. Sometimes we can shake the weight of stress ourselves. That’s when having a professional help can be so life changing. Mental health professionals can not only lift the burden of how we react to stress, but by teaching us to manage our stress responses, they can help set the stage for real and profound healing to take place and augment your treatment at someplace like Beyond Basics Physical Therapy.
As I wrap this blog up, I ask you to make time for you. Your health and sense of well-being are one of your life’s most valuable commodities and you are worth it.
Sources
Low P. Overview of the autonomic nervous system. Merk Manual Professional Version. https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/neurologic-disorders/autonomic-nervous-system/overview-of-the-autonomic-nervous-system Accessed May 23, 2019
Mariotti A, . The effects of chronic stress on health: new insights into the molecular mechanisms of brain-body communication. Future SCI OA. 2015 Nov; 1(3): FSO23
Won E, Kim Y. Stress, the autonomic nervous system, and the immune-kynurenine pathway in the etiology of depression. Current Neuropharmacology, 2016, 14 665-73
Fiona McMahon, DPT
The bladder, not super complex right? Just a tupperware for pee, holding your urine until an opportune time to go. The bladder is so much more than that, integrating information from the brain, muscles of the pelvic floor, and responding to stretch to efficiently serve its purpose. We never think of the bladder until something goes wrong with it.
In this blog, we will be exploring the anatomy of the bladder, what is normal for the bladder, what can go wrong with the bladder, and how to best take care of your precious and hard working bladder.
Bladder Anatomy/ Physiology
Male or female, we all have the same basic structure of the bladder, with a few exceptions. Here’s what everyone has in their lower urinary tract.
Sex differences:
People with male anatomy have a prostate. The prostate is a sex organ and is responsible for keeping the semen at the right pH to fertilize a waiting egg. It wraps around the urethra and lives just under the bladder. It also provides a mechanical buttress or support for the bladder, lessening the load on the pelvic floor. Because of its proximity to the urethra, problems with the prostate can cause problems with the bladder. An enlarged prostate, which can be a benign part of aging, cancer, or infection, will restrict the flow of urine out of the urethra, resulting in weak stream, painful, burning urination, and difficulty urinating (the same thing happens with tight pelvic floor muscles). A prostate that has been surgically removed, most often has occurred for treatment of prostate cancer can reduce support for the bladder and lead to leaking. For more information on prostate cancer click here and for more info on prostatitis, click here!
Another important difference between people with female and male anatomy are the respective length of their urethras. Male urethras are a lot longer than female urethras. This is one of the reasons people with female anatomy are more prone to bladder infections. In a female, bacteria have a lot easier time making the trek to the bladder because of the shorter urethra.
Conditions of the Bladder
Incontinence
Incontinence is the involuntary leakage of urine. There are many causes of incontinence. It’s important to know why you are leaking in order to know how to appropriately remedy it. It is possible to have more than one type of incontinence, and when that occurs we call it mixed incontinence. Let’s go through the types together.
Incomplete voiding
Incomplete voiding is when the bladder does not fully empty.
In a normally functioning patient, volitional effort should not be required to empty the bladder. A pelvic floor that is unable to relax, will have a smaller opening for urine to pass through or the voluntary muscles involuntarily contract because of muscle spasming, resulting in hesitancy, or incomplete bladder emptying.
Bladder Pain
Pain is our body’s way of telling us there is something wrong. With a new onset of bladder pain, it is important to rule out infection or an organic condition. Often times musculoskeletal conditions or general bladder irritation can mimic bladder infections. In our practice, we often see patients who had been convinced they had an infection only to find out all of their tests for infection, where in fact, negative and the source of their pain was a tight or shortened pelvic floor.
It is important to understand the character of your bladder pain. Does your bladder hurt as it fills with urine and then feels better only shortly after voiding? If your answer is yes, you may have bladder irritation from urine that isn’t dilute enough (you are not drinking enough water), or you are consuming something irritating like spicy food, caffeine or alcohol. You may also have a condition known as painful bladder syndrome/interstitial cystitis which is contributing to your symptoms. It is important to get a handle on bladder filling pain right away, because it is the first step in treating other conditions such as frequency, urgency, incomplete emptying and retention.
If you have pain and burning during urination with no infection, it is likely the pelvic floor muscles and tissues cannot relax enough to allow urine to flow out without burning, (the pelvic floor also plays a role in bladder filling pain as well). Burning with urination that is not caused by an infection, is treatable with pelvic floor PT.
Frequency:
Everytime I hear someone say “I have a small bladder”, I have the uncontrollable urge to say, “No, you have a sensitive bladder, which can be trained to be better”. Saying you have a small bladder is 95% of the time fatalistic and just untrue. Most bladders, with few exceptions can hold 400-600 mL. Holding capacity can be diminished in cases of constipation, pregnancy and some neurological conditions, but most everyone is working with similarly sized equipment (the exception, being growing children).
Average intervoid interval, aka times between pees, is 2-3 hours, unless you chug a liter of fluid or cups of caffeine in one sitting. An example is being able to make it through James Cameron’s, Titanic, without having to excuse yourself. The trick with the bladder is it’s antsy. It informs you with the first urge to urinate when it is approximately 40% full. Over time, if you listen at that first urge, the bladder will begin to inform you earlier and earlier until you are going once every 20 minutes. Training your bladder to hold more is achieved with ignoring the urge or practicing various behavioral strategies, like deep diaphragmatic breathing with pelvic floor drops, to allow for longer intervals until your bladder capacity is within normal limits. This can be a longer process for those with a more sensitive bladder.
Bladder training is complicated by pain. Pain usually must be treated simultaneously in order to truly get the most benefit from bladder retraining. It is also important to realize that substances like caffeine and alcohol increase urgency and make bladder training more difficult.
How to Manage Bladder Issues:
Fortunately, there is a lot you can do, RIGHT now to manage your bladder symptoms. I find that in my practice and everyday life, there is a certain fatalism about bladder conditions. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard phrases like, “ I just have a small bladder”, “People my age after babies just leak”, “I am older so I pee more at night” and “it’s always been like this”. The bladder is a trainable organ and the muscles influencing it can be stretched and strengthened like any other muscle in the body. The best part is there is so much you can do for yourself at home. It’s totally worth trying and in many cases is a life changer.
Diet and fluid intake:
It may sound counter intuitive, but drinking plenty of water is good for almost all bladder conditions. Yes I am talking about leaking, urgency, incomplete emptying and frequency. Drinking lots of water keeps your urine nice and dilute, minimizing the irritation of the bladder wall as well as the reactive spasm of the detrusor muscle. You should drink approximately half your bodyweight in ounces of water a day. For example: a 150 lbs person should consume 75 ounces of water a day. You should increase this amount if you are exercising, or experience a lot of sweating or drink a lot of caffeine and or alcohol, which are both dehydrating. It is also important to be mindful of bladder irritants which can worsen bladder issues. Big irritant culprits are alcohol, caffeine, citrus, and spicy food. In children, dairy milk is a common bladder irritant. Keep in mind that one person’s bladder irritant may not be your bladder irritant. It’s easy to look at lists of bladder irritants and get overwhelmed. Try eliminating a suspected offender for two to three days. If you feel better when you aren’t consuming that item and worse when you add it back in, consider eliminating that item from your diet. It is also important to eat in a way that prevents constipation, as this worsens bladder symptoms and puts extra pressure on the bladder.
Posture
If you are having problems fully emptying your bladder or you have post void leakage (dribbles following going to the bathroom) consider your toileting posture. People with bladder issues should sit on the toilet ( even dudes), to allow the pelvic floor muscles to relax and allow the bladder to fully empty.
Bladder Training
If you have bladder frequency or leakage now is the time to try and train your bladder to hold more urine. Keep in mind you should start treatment to address pain with physical therapy and in certain cases, with medication, to allow you to be successful with bladder training. I always tell my patients to start their bladder retraining at home, where a bathroom is available to take the stress out of possible leaks or not being able to find a bathroom. Start by simply waiting to go to the bathroom 5-10 minutes past your first urge to urinate. Use behavioral strategies, such as deep breathing and pelvic floor drops, mindfulness, distraction and others. If you don’t have to go after 5-10 minutes, Great! If you do, go to the bathroom. As waiting 10 minutes becomes easy, stretch your time to 20 minutes and so on until you are able to go 2-3 hours in between urination.
Physical Therapy
Physical therapy is considered a mainstay and top treatment for musculoskeletal causes of bladder disorders and bladder pain. Expert pelvic floor physical therapists are clinicians who can find the cause of your bladder issues and provide you with a customized plan that will provide you with the best results possible. PT’s can work to relax spasmed muscles, treat constipation contributing to bladder issues, improve your toilet posture, reduce tightness around the bladder, abdominal and thigh region that can contribute to bladder dysfunction, as well as strengthen weak muscles. If you are experiencing bladder issues, please come see us. There is so much we can do to help!
Sources:
Berghmans L, Hendriks H, Van Waalwijk, et al. Conservative treatment of urge urinary incontinence in women: a systematic review of randomized clinical trials. BJU Int. 2000; 85: 254-63
Chancellor, M, Yoshimura N. Neurophysiology of stress incontinence. Rev Urol. 2004; 6(Suppl3)S19-S28
Chang H, Lynm C, Glass R, et al. Urinary incontinence in older women. JAMA, 2010; 303(21): 2208
FitzGerald M, Brensinger C, Brubaker L, et al. What is the pain of interstitial cystitis like?. International Urogynecology Journal Including Pelvic Floor Dysfunction. 2005
Shafik A, Shafik I. Overactive bladder inhibition in response to pelvic floor muscle exercises. World J Urol. 2003 May; 20(6):347-7. Epib. Apr 4
Julia Rosenthal PT, DPT
As an avid high intensity exerciser, I am always looking to push myself in my workouts. When pain gets in the way of my progress, it can be extremely frustrating. For years, I have been struggling with chronic hip and sacroiliac joint (low back) pain. These symptoms intensified about two and a half years ago when I fractured a lumbar vertebra weight lifting. Recovery was hard, and during that time I was told by doctors, friends, and family that I could not or should not return to the things I loved: lifting heavy weights and running outside. I was devastated. I tried swimming, biking, the crazy looking stair treadmill at the gym, and while I was able to get some exercise in, I still felt like I had lost one of the things that brought me the most joy.
Months after my injury, I finally started listening to my body and my physical therapist friends rather than the limiting and negative advice I had gotten. I started returning to weight lifting and running and began trying not to judge myself for the strength I had lost. The more I did, the better I felt. I was scared, but I felt liberated at the same time. But despite making some initial progress, I started to hit a wall. I couldn’t deadlift as much as I could before, I couldn’t lift as much overhead, and I was too afraid to run on concrete or to get in a squat rack, which was where I had hurt myself all those months ago. I started to feel that hip and sacroiliac (SIJ) pain again after every workout, and I knew I had to change something about what I was doing.
Enter: Pilates. Pilates and weight lifting are both forms of resistance training, but there are key differences between them that make Pilates an effective form of cross training for a weightlifter. When you do any singular form of exercise, your body is learning how to complete a task one way. Introducing a different form of exercises gives you variability, and teaches your body to work under lots of different conditions using different muscle groups. The more options our bodies have for how to complete a task (like a deadlift), the stronger we become.
Here at Beyond Basics Physical Therapy, I had the opportunity to work with Kierstin Elliot,a certified Pilates instructor with a wealth of experience working with clients who struggle with orthopedic issues, including pelvic floor dysfunction. “In Pilates,” Kierstin explained, “subtle nuances matter and you have to be a stickler for form and alignment.” Weightlifting athletes, on the other hand, generally focus more on larger, more powerful movements. Because of these differences, Pilates can make a big difference when it comes to increasing strength and decreasing injury in people who typically exercise with high resistance. In the months that I spent working one on one with Kierstin, I achieved personal bests in my squat and my deadlift and could feel that I was much more steady in any single leg weight lifting activity.
If you like to lift weights and you want to see your performance improve, here are 5 specific ways that Pilates can up your weight lifting game:
Thanks for reading! I hope this blog post helped you understand how you can take your training to the next level. If you are interested in experiencing what Pilates can offer or how physical therapy can maximize your athletic potential, please call our midtown (212-354-2622) or downtown office (212-267-0240) today!
Check out what Kierstin has to say about Pilates here!
The Benefits of Pilates While Healing Diastasis Recti
Pilates with Kierstin! Standing Side Splits
Pilates with Kierstin! Bridges with Stability Ball
References:
Fiona McMahon PT, DPT (She, her, hers)
It’s that magical time of year in New York City, that I call “Goldie Locks Time”. It is that brief stretch of one to two weeks right after the cold of winter has left us and right before the sweltering hot gritty city summer descends upon us. It is the time of year that the weather is so supremely pleasant, that the hustle and bustle of the city slows and usually frenetic New Yorkers actually take time to stop and smell the roses, literally. My pediatric patients begin to grow giddy as school is wrapping up in a couple weeks. It is a time when many New Yorkers start looking forward to their summer escapes back to their home towns across the country or vacations to new and familiar locales alike. Having the time and resources to travel is a luxury, but for those with chronic pelvic pain, it can seem like a really daunting task. People often wonder, “how can I fly across the country if sitting for more than 20 minutes causes my pain?”, “how will I keep from flaring?”, “How do I negotiate the demands of travel so I can actually enjoy my time away?”. Although travel can be really daunting, there are steps that you can take to ease your journey and help you enjoy your time at your destination. Below are some considerations for travel I hope that you will find helpful.
Hydrate- Even if You Have Bladder Problems
Recirculated air is the worst and is inevitable when flying, but is also something you should consider with bus, car, and train trips. Long and even short haul flights can leave you feeling parched and dry which can cause issues with many pelvic floor symptoms. It is really important to not get on the plane dehydrated. In the week or so preceding your trip, be extra mindful of trying to get enough water. A popular guideline we use at BBPT with to try and consume at least one half your body weight in water in ounces. For example, if you weigh 150 pounds, drink 75 ounces of water. Being properly hydrated will decrease irritation within the bladder and can even reduce frequency, reduce your chances of constipation, and ensure the tissues of your body have good mobility. Also be sure to hydrate on the plane and in the airport. Water sold at airports is usually overpriced and has the downside of being packaged in environmentally unfriendly plastic. To save money and the planet, I suggest bringing an empty reusable water bottle through security. Once you are through security you can fill it up and keep on your hydration game. One thing to remember is to take your water bottle out of your bag and place it in the screening bin, so you won’t lose time having security check inside your bag to verify that your bottle is indeed empty.
Prioritize Pooping
In my world, it’s all about poop. Traveling can lead to some gnarly cases of constipation, which makes virtually every pelvic floor complaint worse. We talked about keeping up with your hydration, which is a really good first step. Making sure that you have a enough time to eat, chill, and have a solid BM before rushing off to the airport is really important. So when possible, Try and carve out at least an hour of pre-travel chill time before heading out the door.
Food
Eating well is so important. Many of our patients have diets that make them feel better. When travelling, food can be a wild card. With the change in routine associated with travel, it can be all too easy to throw a diet that is working to the wind. A huge change in dietary routines is one of the top reasons I see people flare. Although indulging in margaritas and other treats can be so much fun, be aware of how it will affect your symptoms and overall enjoyment of your trip. It is good to come prepared if possible. Packing snacks that you know don’t make you feel like garbage if you are going to place where you are unsure of what the food situation will be like, will help.
Choose your Seat
The idea of sitting on a long haul flight is daunting especially for those who have pelvic and or sitting pain or bladder issues. There are travel cushions you can bring with you to ease your symptoms. If you don’t typically use a travel cushion, check out my cushion hack bellow using a jacket.
Choosing seats next to the bathroom when possible can go a long way towards reducing stress for folks with bladder issues. Additionally ,opting for an aisle seat can also be helpful. To the extent possible, try to get up and move to reduce the pressure on your pelvic area.
Manage Travel Stress
Travel is a stressful thing for most of us. There is so much out of our control and there’s no amount meditation or mindfulness that can change that. That being said, meditation and mindfulness practice can help how you deal with how you react to cancelled flights, lost baggage, the works. Allowing yourself a quiet moment to breathe before and during your travels can help you re center and get back to enjoying the journey. Both Calm and Headspace make really awesome guided meditation apps that you can use while waiting for your flights.
Get out There!
This world is so big and beautiful. It can be really hard if pelvic pain is holding you back. Try these tips out on smaller trips to see if they help you! If you find that you are still having pain that holds you back, see a pelvic floor physical therapist who can help you get out there!
Beyond Basics Physical Therapy offers intensive week or weeks long treatment to those who live out of town and do not have regular access to pelvic floor physical therapy. If you are feeling like taking a trip to the Big Apple, NYC, check out more about our out of town services here.
