Medical Practitioners Are You Asking Your Patients These Questions About The Pelvic Floor

The pelvic floor can affect the way we sit, stand, walk and exercise. It’s also the most poorly understood part of the body in medicine. If you go to any rehab practitioner, doctor, or exercise specialist; ask them to name a muscle in the heart of the pelvic floor. You’re lucky if they can name one. All of these people can tell you where your hamstring is but do they understand the base it attaches to? You have to think of the pelvic floor as the bottom of a soda can. It’s a pressure system, just like our bodies. Imagine there is a hole or a dent at the bottom of that soda can. It will leak and soda will be everywhere. It can affect both women and men. Trauma such as a fall, childbirth or underlying diseases can all affect the pelvic floor. To all of you medical practitioners, I’m sure you’ve had a patient that has had hip, back, shoulder, or foot pain that continues to linger for years. Do you ask them the right questions? Here are some activity of daily living questions that get ignored:

How many times a day do you go to the bathroom?

Do you have any issues with your bowels?

Do you take consistent bowel movements?

Any instances of incontinence?

Is sex painful?

Is sex possible?

When your patients don’t get better, do you ask these questions?

Information is everywhere, do you use it properly? You want to build your practice? Reach out to a pelvic floor physical therapist or pelvic floor pain specialist. The field is growing so hop on the train and educate yourself. Ask them questions. Collaborate. The goal is to help your patients get better faster and improve their quality of life.

To learn more about the causes and results of pelvic floor dysfunction, read this blog post from The Co Pilates.