What is a Pelvic Floor?
The pelvic floor is made up of muscles that are located at the bottom of your pelvis. These voluntary muscles support your bladder and other organs, as well as help control urination, defecation, and intercourse. These muscles can weaken or overly tighten due to childbirth, age, disuse, or disease. This weakening or over tightening can lead to stress incontinence, urge incontinence, overactive bladder, painful urination or intercourse, and interstitial cystitis. Advanced Women’s Healthcare offers a personalized treatment plan to help women retrain their pelvic floor.
What are the benefits?
Many patients have been able to completely stop taking medications for bladder issues after retraining these pelvic floor muscles through our program. No medications are required to aid in this process as the entire treatment plan is muscle-based. Relearning how to control the pelvic floors muscles has many positive effects for the female body and can eliminate issues and pain as the muscles strengthen and better control of the muscles is gained.
What happens at an appointment?
After completion of a brief questionnaire and consultation, patients will begin the first appointment with our Prometheus-trained Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation Nurse, Caroline. During the treatment they learn to work the pelvic floor muscles in accordance with the training program – similar to working with a fitness trainer.
How old do patients have to be?
Women of any age can benefit from pelvic floor rehabilitation, though there tend to be a lot of post-partum patients as that is often when the pelvic floor muscles are at their weakest. Caroline has been assisting patients at Advanced Women’s Healthcare with this treatment since 2009, and she has a high success rate – only having patients return if they need a touch-up due to the lack of maintaining their personalized at-home exercise regimens.
What do patients need to do between treatments?
Goals will be set for each week, and exercises need to be done between office visits to build up muscle strength and achieve the best results possible. No equipment is needed to exercise outside of the office visits. Patients will go through individualized treatment plans and what types of exercises need to do daily, as well as maintenance after the therapy sessions have ended.
How long does it take to see results?
Progress can be seen in 3-4 weeks, though it takes 6-8 visits to achieve the full results of pelvic floor therapy. Patients will come into the office once a week, and the treatment time is approximately 30 minutes or less. Many women even tend to come in and do it during their lunch break. Normal activities can be resumed immediately, as there is no down time or recovery.
For more information on Pelvic Floor Rehabilitation call Caroline at (214) 238-7816. She will be happy to answer any questions personalized treatment plans. Advanced Women’s Healthcare is here to help with any female healthcare needs, so don’t hesitate to reach out with inquiries.
