Photo: David J Laporte By Melinda Fontaine Peaceful labor? Comfortable delivery? Calm childbirth? Do these sound like oxymorons? It’s true! Jane was a young woman who saw a segment on TV about HypnoBirthing. She saw pregnant women who looked like they were concentrating really hard on an abdominal workout or a challenging algebra equation. Then …
Calling Bull*!@# on Science
By Elizabeth Akincilar-Rummer How many times have you heard a journalist say something like, “Researchers report a significant breakthrough…”, “Groundbreaking research shows… “, or “According to a new scientific study…”? The news constantly bombards us with “research” or “studies” to provoke an emotional response, whether it’s fear, excitement, or surprise. The point is, to catch your attention. Here …
The Blunt Truth About Medicinal Marijuana and Pelvic Pain
By Shannon Pacella, DPT, PHRC Lexington Medical marijuana. You’ve probably heard of it. You’ve maybe even used it. But what you might not know about is the tug-of-war going on between researchers and lawmakers, and how this impacts the ability of this stigmatized substance to be studied – potentially missing out on an alternative treatment option for a multitude …
Great Sex and Orgasms After Prostate Cancer
By Melinda Fontaine, DPT, PHRC Walnut Creek Meet Paul and Ashley. Paul and Ashley have an active sex life. They are taking the time to get to know each other’s bodies and pleasures as well as their own. They are trying new ways of being intimate and using toys. They are having fun and growing closer as a …
Method to the Madness? Get to Know the Different Types of IUDs
By Jandra Mueller In my last blog, One and Done: The IUD and the Future of Birth Control, I talked about how the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) are recommending long acting reversible contraceptives (LARC) as their preferred contraceptive option. The two main forms discussed were the implant and the IUD. In part one I mentioned that …
One and Done: The IUD and the Future of Birth Control
By Jandra Mueller Are you currently on birth control? Have you used birth control in the past? These are common questions I ask when doing an evaluation of a female patient who is experiencing painful intercourse, also known as dyspareunia. Most women I see are currently, or have been in the past, on some form of birth control. Typically …
Chew on This: Diet and Your Pelvic Floor
When I was younger, the phrase “You are what you eat,” totally confused me. Doughnuts are so delicious and sweet, therefore if I eat a half dozen of glazed old fashioned doesn’t that mean that I would also be sweet and highly desirable? Obviously, I now know that my logic as a kid was inaccurate, otherwise I would still be …
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 …
Is Cryotherapy an effective treatment for Pudendal Neuralgia?
People recovering from pudendal neuralgia will tell you there is a lack of understanding about this diagnosis and treatment options in the medical community. Week after week, our blog, How do I know if I have PN or PNE, is one of our most read posts. Recently there has been discussion about cryotherapy treatment for pudendal neuralgia. Sara Saunders, PT, …
Why All Postpartum Women Need Pelvic Floor Physical and Occupational Therapy
Image permission via Cosmopolitan By Stephanie Prendergast The Facts 21% of women undergoing vaginal delivery had levator ani avulsion1 29% of women undergoing vaginal deliveries had pubic bone fractures2 60% of postpartum women reported Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI)3 64.3% of women reported sexual dysfunction in the first year following childbirth4 77% of women had low back pain that …
Ketamine May Offer Rapid Relief from Persistent Pelvic Pain
By Allison Wells, MD Chronic pelvic pain is at a difficult intersection of anatomical pain generators and mood disorders like depression and anxiety that are coincident with or caused by the pain itself. To effectively relieve chronic pelvic pain you need a treatment that addresses the pain and the mood disorder issues. Ketamine infusions do both. Ketamine …
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 …
The Brain Below: The Role Your Gut May Play in Pelvic Pain
By Elizabeth Akincilar-Rummer, MSPT, Cofounder, PHRC Los Angeles When is the last time you heard a little voice inside you that tried to give you advice or warn you of danger? Some describe it as ‘butterflies,’ others a ‘gut feeling.’ That feeling can be attributed to the extremely extensive network of over 100 million neurons that make up …
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. …
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View PostLetter To The Senator about Medicare
Here at PHRC we are not Medicare providers, for good reasons; you may remember that PHRC published a blog post about them. Still, we receive calls almost daily from Medicare patients enquiring about treatment from us, and unfortunately we have to turn them down: the law says, oddly, that we cannot provide treatment to Medicare patients even if they are …
Pregnancy, Labor, and Delivery with Vulvovaginal Pain
By Melinda Fontaine Julia called me yesterday to ask some questions about pelvic pain and pregnancy. She was 38 weeks pregnant and getting ready to give birth. She had a history of some pain with intercourse prior to getting pregnant and was surprised to feel some vaginal pain at her last OB appointment as well. Julia wanted to know …
When Getting It Up Gets You Down: Erectile Dysfunction and Your Pelvic Floor
As many of us reading this blog can attest, pelvic pain can be an issue that leaves us feeling not only physically uncomfortable, but emotionally/mentally drained and isolated. Often, by the time many people get seen by a physical and occupational therapists, they have been mismanaged by other providers, leading to increased frustration among other things. Men, in particular, seem …
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 …
Pain as the Ultimate Protector
By Admin I recently attended a course with pain researcher and clinical neuroscientist, Lorimer Moseley. He, along with his colleague David Butler, have changed the face of pain science and helped many clinicians and patients understand how pain works. If you want to see Lorimer in action, and explain pain better than I ever could, check out his TED …
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 …