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Want to know what to Avoid when you have a prolapse? Watch this.

Pelvic floor muscle exercises are key to managing pelvic organ prolapse symptoms. We know that if you do them three times a day for 3 to 5 months resolves symptoms: your pelvic floor will begin to effectively support your pelvic organs and you’ll no longer have those uncomfortable, bothersome symptoms. The following five main lifestyle factors have also been found to aggravate prolapse symptoms by increasing the pressure in your abdomen. Follow the lifestyle advice guidance below to reduce your risk of prolapses returning.

• Constipation

Constipation is usually caused by dehydration and not enough fibre in your diet. Try to avoid this by ensuring that you eat the recommended ten portions of fruit and vegetables each day. Straining to empty your bowel can make your prolapse worse, so make sure that you adopt the correct position when opening your bowels, and use diaphragmatic breathing as your only pressure.

• ...

Firstly… No, you don’t have to get on the floor. Click here to Watch How.

And secondly, yes. They are that good. We know that up to 97% of women who do pelvic floor exercises three times a day (to the point of fatigue, not just a wiggle) for 3-5 months will have a COMPLETE RESOLUTION of their Incontinence or Prolapse symptoms.

Compelling, eh? It’s free as well..

So what are you waiting for? Time to get exercising that pelvic floor!

Before we begin, here’s a little disclaimer – it’s important to get a thorough examination from a qualified pelvic health physiotherapist or your doctor. Not all pelvic floor problems are solved by doing pelvic floor exercises – if you have pelvic pain or a tight muscle doing exercises can make things feel worse. Get checked first folks!

How to do the exercises:

Pull in your back passage as if to stop from breaking wind, imagining your anus moving upwards and forwards towards your pubic bone. Although you’re focussing on moving the back passage the w

I’m really glad to be able to bring you this fantastic, painfully honest blog by an inspiring Endometriosis survivor and triathlete. I was lucky enough to work with her on her journey back to sport and fitness following surgery. She never failed to inspire me with her grit, determination and gentle self-care. At the end of the day you can’t force your body into behaving a certain way, it has to be guided, cajoled and gently pursuaded. That can be frustrating, but she shows us how with gentle self-care and perserverence great things can be achieved. I’m really looking forward to reading more as her training progresses – you can HERE. And while you’re at it, if you have a few spare pennies please sponsor her Olympic Triathlon in June!

My journey has been a bit of odd one really.  I’ve had all the usual stuff of painful heavy awful periods in my teens but was on the pill from 16 which kept things sort of under control.  I was actually really ill in my mid 20s and after a couple of y

Getting the “It’s Not All About the Wand” message out there… Listen Here.

I was so excited to join Lori Forner on the Pelvic Health Podcast. For years it’s been a great source of evidence-based knowledge, clinical reasoning and access to inspiring minds withing our profession from all over the globe. Getting asked to take part was a huge honour! And I got to talk about my favourite topic…

Here’s Lori’s intro…

Jilly joins me in this episode to talk about how “the wand” can help with pelvic floor muscle tension and pain. More importantly, she discusses WHAT we are actually doing with it (spoiler alert – we are not releasing trigger points). I didn’t actually need to talk at all (and therefore I sat back in awe, loving the accent and amazing knowledge bombs). She so eloquently discusses why and how our bodies protect and guard us against threats to our nervous system and all the neat things we can do to help our patients (or yourselves if you suffer from any kind of pelvic pain).

If

I’ve had a lot of great conversations since I put up my wand vlog,  and I find that I’m coming back to the same areas so I decided that it’s time we talk about the wand.

1 . It’s a great tool but it’s not for everyone

In my clinic I do use them regularly with patients with difficulties reaching their pelvic floor, problems with dexterity or force through their hands, or if they’re keen to try it but don’t like the idea of self-touch. They’re also great for people who really want to own their treatment and who get a great response from manual myofascial release with me. The rest of the time with people who are comfortable with self-touch I get them using their own thumbs with one leg up supported or when reclined. For those who aren’t comfortable with self-touch I start with a deep squat breathing exercise and more generalised pelvic floor muscle down training.

Next I

There was such deluge of important research presented at the recent World Congress on Abdominal and Pelvic pain that I’m taking time to digest it and translate it into practice. Here’s my second instalment.

If you didn’t see Part 1 click here.

There’s much more discussion in the vlog above, here are my brief notes. Starting with the end of the BPS cluster, Mr Kenneth Peters MD presented the role of peripheral nervous system on development and management of pelvic pain.

He believes there’s clearly two distinct populations in BPS: those with active Hunner’s Ulcers and those without. Those with Hunner’s Ulcers and pain/urgency symptoms (the more Type 3c, small stenotic bladder, passing small volumes at a high frequency) are the “active” Hunner’s ulcer phenotype, who tend to have less systemic pain, occur in post-menopausal women, and patients respond more readily to intensive surgical treatment. The vast majority of our BPS patients don’t fit into thi

I had an absolutely inspiring time at the World Congress on Abdominal and Pelvic Pain in Washington recently. I was given the opportunity thanks to the Dame Josephine Barnes award from the POGP and the EPIC Scholarship from Entropy Physiotherapy in Chicago and Lorimer Moseley. I can’t thank them enough for supporting the education and development of clinicians who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend world-leading conferences such as this one. It truly was EPIC.

I’ve gone back through my notes and pulled together some of the things I think are important and have great clinical translation. It helped me to gather and retain the information and I really wanted to share what I learned. Better informed clinicians providing up to date evidence-based therapy are going to be the best for our patients, and at the end of the day this is why we do what we do. Apologies to any of the researchers for inaccuracies, these are just a few teeny pearls of wisdom I took/understood from your fantastic