World Continence Week is on this week from the 22-28th of June and the theme is ‘Tell someone who cares’. At Eric st Physiotherapy and Pilates we treat our clients holistically and that includes caring about your continence, and making sure that you care too. Many of our clients come in wanting to do clinical pilates to ‘tighten everything up’, and after looking a little deeper we find that their pelvic floor is one of those things. The fantastic thing is that by combining Women’s Health Physiotherapy targeted at the pelvic floor muscles and following on with Clinical Pilates we can work together and make a real change.
A little background on your pelvic floor muscles. They are a group of muscles located at the base of the pelvis including the Levator Ani muscles around your front and back passages, the muscles attaching up into your pelvis and also include your sphincters, ligaments and organs. These all need to be working in harmony to give you continence. When they aren’t working together they can bother you in many different ways.
Let’s touch on the two most common types of incontinence, which can be related to the bladder or the bowels. Stress incontinence is the most common; do you leak when cough/sneeze/laugh/jump/run? This is often seen in athletes, runners, gymnasts, post menopausal women, post prostatectomy and women who have had children.
Urgency or urge incontinence is the feeling of needing to rush to the toilet or not quite making it. This occurs in people many different ages and presentations.
I could go on and discuss all of the other types, however, I think it is now up to you to ‘Tell someone who cares’. Continence issues affect more than 4.8 million Australians and in most cases can be cured or better managed, it will make a big difference to your physical and mental wellbeing.
Liz