At Legacy Physical Therapy we specialize in treating pelvic health issues. Some of the common pelvic health issues we see fall into the following the 3 categories: peeing, pain, or pressure in the pelvic area.

Here are some examples to showcase how important pelvic health is to your overall health and why.

PEEING
Let’s start by talking about a woman who has noticed that when she exercises, she leaks urine. In the beginning, she jokes about it maybe saying things like “I have to go pee before exercise class” to try to avoid leaking. Over time, she realizes that urinating before workouts doesn’t stop her leakage. The woman then starts exercising less, decreasing her activity level, or even completely avoiding activities like jumping or running due to leakage.

When people greatly reduce their physical activity level because of bladder control issues, there can be long term health consequences such as a loss of bone density, loss of muscle mass, and increased weight gain. Avoiding exercise can also lead to poor mental health. You may not have good energy, mental clarity, or stress management as a result of inactivity.

We don’t want to see any woman going down that path. We want women to stay active in the ways they want to be active, free of bladder problems. And pelvic physical therapy can do just that.

PAIN
What about pain? A type of pain we commonly see at Legacy Physical Therapy is pain with sex. Pain with sex is not something women should have to simply deal with. Having pain with sexual activity could affect a woman mentally and physically. It could affect her sexual drive or desire. It could affect her relationship with her partner. It could affect her partner. And so on. We don’t want women and their relationships to suffer. We want people seeking help earlier on because there are ways pelvic physical therapy can help.

PRESSURE
Finally, let’s discuss pelvic pressure. Pressure is often times related to pelvic organ prolapse issues, especially if the woman is in the early postpartum phase or the menopausal phase of life. Oftentimes, women are shocked when they start feeling symptoms of vaginal pressure and heaviness, and they don’t know what to do about it.

What commonly happens is women start to limit their activity and avoid things that they used to love to do for fear that they are going to make things worse. Unfortunately again, as we saw with the example with bladder leakage, that can be a downward slope to being less and less active and potentially having more and more health issues down the road. We want to prevent that downward slope from happening.

So, as you can see, resolving these pelvic health issues has a much bigger impact than the issue itself. It affects mental well-being, emotional well-being, physical well-being, social well-being, activity level, and overall quality of life.

Issues with pelvic health are treatable, oftentimes very conservatively, especially if you can partner with the good pelvic physical therapist. Your health and your quality of life can be greatly impacted for the better if you get help.

To all the women out there- you don’t have to suffer in silence. Please reach out. Talk to your friends. Talk to your health care providers. Give us a call. We are happy to be a resource for you. We believe that it’s important for women to get the help that they need to live their lives free of pelvic health issues.