LIVING WELL By Amy Moses, PT, DPT, OMT
Your Pelvic Floor: A Timeline What pelvic floor health looks like across the lifespan is wildly different from person to person, but one thing is consistent: change. Through each segment of our life, we owe it to ourselves to understand the true standards for pelvic floor health, not only so we can recognize when issues arise in order to seek help, but also, to incorporate a truly healthy and stable pelvic floor into our daily activities and lifestyle.
Pediatric In children, pelvic health revolves around healthy bowel and bladder issues. Constipation alone can cause and contribute to long-term pelvic floor issues by impacting bladder symptoms such as delayed bedwetting, urinary urgency and incontinence into the school-age years, recurrent UTIs, even rectal prolapse and bowel leakage. Any one of these issues can impact how a child sees themself as they are also learning to navigate social aspects of their early years.
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Pre-teen and Teenage years For many of our young teens, we are seeing an increase in period pain, low back pain, and postural issues. For many of these young girls, medication is offered as a method to reduce intense period cramping, when simply learning breathing techniques and pelvic floor lengthening and retraining can decrease the amount of cramping, pain, and limitations that often accompany this time of the month. More and more teens are missing school, sporting events/practices, and social events because of period-related issues. The psychological impact can also affect confidence and self-esteem.
Athletes Across the board, improving pelvic floor strength, coordination, and stability can be a gamechanger for almost any sport, activity, or workout regimen. The pelvic floor is often trained to “strengthen” and “contract,” when lengthening work and coordination training can
Amy Moses, PT, DPT, OMT is the co-founder and co-owner of MOJO Pelvic Health in Memphis. To learn more about pelvic health, visit www.MOJOph.com or on social media @mojopelvichealth on Instagram and Facebook. To contact Amy, please email amy@MOJOph.com.