By Stephanie Prendergast Do women have a prostate? Where is the female prostate and what does it do? I have been a pelvic floor physical and occupational therapists for 17 years and, until recently, had never heard of such a structure. Last month, Dr. Irwin Goldstein, urologist, sexual medicine enthusiast, and International Society for the Study of …
Love and Vaginismus: Mary’s story of personal growth
By Melinda Fontaine Mary is an amazing story because in a matter of months, she went from not having any penetrative sex for many years to having unrestricted intercourse with her partner. When Mary was a young woman, she saw a gynecologist for a routine exam. Now, lying on the exam table with your butt almost falling off the …
Pelvic floor physical and occupational therapy for vulvodynia: a clinician’s guide
By Stephanie Prendergast, MPT, Cofounder, PHRC Los Angeles Recently I was asked to write an article about pelvic floor physical and occupational therapy for the treatment of vulvodynia, which will be published later this year as a tool for gynecologists. Since our blog readers are a combination of clinicians and people with pelvic pain I figured I would share …
Kegel What?
By Admin The Kegel, the black box of the exercise world. Are you really doing it right? In today’s post we are going to review some simple exercises to help get to know the pelvic floor muscles. Now, I strongly recommend going through my past post “Exercises for Short/Tight Pelvic Floor” first. Generally speaking, patients …
Tampon Talk
A tampon is “a mass of absorbent material, primarily used as a feminine hygiene product.” The word tampon originated from the medieval French word “tampion,” which literally means a piece of cloth to stop a hole, stamp, plug, or stopper. Let’s break this down. The average woman menstruating for five days a month and approximately 40 years will use about …
Jagged Little Pill: Part Two
By Joshua Gonzalez, MD After reading my last post, Jagged Little Pill, many of you who have had similar suspected OCP-related problems may be thinking there’s no hope. Trust me, you are not doomed if you’ve ever taken an oral birth control and you have symptoms of vulvodynia. My goal this week is to reassure you that you’re …
Jagged Little Pill: How Oral Contraceptives Wreak Havoc on the Female Body
By Joshua Gonzalez, MD The advent of oral birth control pills in the 1960s was heralded as a huge victory for women’s rights. Finally, women could take control of their bodies and their fertility. Since then, oral contraceptive pills (OCPs) have become ubiquitous in reproductive aged women with nearly 10 million women today using The Pill as their primary …
A Mesh of a Situation
By Elizabeth Akincilar, MPT, Cofounder, PHRC Merrimack In May 2015 a Delaware jury ordered Boston Scientific, a medical device company, to pay a woman $100 million for pain complications following vaginal mesh placement for treatment of pelvic organ prolapse. A few months prior to that a Texas woman was awarded $73 million for similar complications. Some think that …
Slippery When Wet: Is your lubricant causing pelvic pain, infections, or fertility problems?
Lube is great! It adds moisture and decreases friction, but how do you pick from the multitude of different personal lubes on the market? Which one is the safest? Goop recently asked the same questions in response to watching an episode of Grace and Frankie in which Frankie makes her own lube.
Hormones: Your Body’s Frenemies
Hormones drive me crazy. As a woman, my biological clock seems to be more like an overactive alarm clock lately. For example, on a certain day I may see a baby and feel an intense urge to procreate. It is as if my uterus wants nothing more than for me to have 18 babies right now and then star in …
Female Pelvic Pain Explained: Megan’s Success Story
By: Stephanie Prendergast The Pelvic Health and Rehabilitation Center is excited to announce that Pelvic Pain Explained was released on January 13th! In honor of the book and the New Year, we are sharing stories from our patients that were kind enough to be interviewed for this book. Last week we spoke about Tommy’s recovery from pelvic pain. When Liz …
A Balm for Belly Blues: Maya Abdominal Massage & Gynecological Health
This week, our guest blogger Bria Larson, MS, LAc, FABORM will discuss The Arvigo Techniques of Maya Abdominal Therapy. By Bria Larson The abdomen and pelvis are the source of our creativity and nourishment. They are also vulnerable to injury from physical and emotional trauma, disease and dietary stressors. Based on the healing traditions of the Maya, as taught by Dr. …
Clitoral Woes? Say It Ain’t So
By Sara K. Sauder In preparing the curriculum for my class on vestibulodynia (yes I will start talking about this class over and over because I am discovering so much and learning a lot while in the process of creating and teaching the curriculum and this is a blog that I write using real life experiences so why wouldn’t I write …
New Classification System for Persistent Vulvar Pain
By Stephanie Prendergast In a previous blog post I described my experience while participating in an International Nomenclature Consensus Conference. As you may recall, the motivation for a consensus meeting originated because there was “an unmet medical need for a comprehensive, evidence-based set of vulvovaginal pain diagnoses that can be easily utilized by …
Off the Press! The Pink Pill and Other News
By Stephanie Prendergast It has been an eventful few weeks in pelvic health news! We’ve summarized the top stories and included our commentary. “Pelvic pain may be common among reproductive-age women, NIH study finds.” From the National Institute of Health Article summary: Pain reports were highest for women with endometriosis, however ⅓ of those without any pelvic condition also reported …
Real Patients, Real Stories: Amanda’s Journey
By Sara Stuart Pelvic pain can present itself in a number of ways. For Amanda* (name has been changed for anonymity), her symptoms began with her first menses. “I remember being on a cruise to Mexico with my mom and trying to learn how to put a tampon in for the first time. I spent the time either …
Gwyneth’s Goop and the Pelvic Floor: What They Missed
By Stephanie Prendergast Last week, Gwyneth Paltrow’s popular newsletter featured an article on pelvic floor muscles, which prompted numerous emails and tweets in my direction. Apparently this is a topic that makes my friends and colleagues think of me. While pondering why everyone, except for me, seems to be reading Goop, I took a look. I am glad to see …
Vagi-what? A rough guide to Vaginismus
If you’ve ever said the following: “It feels like there’s a wall there.” “I can’t insert a tampon.” “I can’t have penetrative sex with my husband.” “I was told I need to drink a glass of wine right before sex, but that still doesn’t help.” You might be experiencing vaginismus symptoms. DEFINITION What exactly is vaginismus? Vaginismus, pronounced vaj-uh-niz-muhs, is …
Life After Cancer: The Role of Pelvic Physical and Occupational Therapy
Every year over 70,000 American women are diagnosed with gynecological cancer, according to the CDC. A diagnosis of gynecological cancer can be devastating, but, as medical technology and research advances, more and more women with this diagnosis are becoming cancer survivors. Although surviving cancer is an amazing feat, many of these women are left with a decreased quality of life …
Come Again? An Orgasm Guide
I remember coming of age as a hormonal teen- before the days of google (believe it), hearing whispers about “orgasms”. It was like I went home for summer break with all of my childhood intact and when I came back to school in the fall, my peers were suddenly obsessed. I was bombarded with comments (from both sexes) of orgasms …
Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections: the proverbial ring of fire
Urinary tract infections (UTI) are considered to be the most common bacterial infection in humans, costing the US health care system about $1.6 billion dollars per year. These infections plague millions of people at some point or another throughout the lifetime. In fact, some research suggests that a female’s lifetime risk of getting one is as high as 1 in …