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Symptoms of Interstitial Cystitis/ Painful Bladder Syndrome

In Interstitial Cystitis by Stephanie PrendergastLeave a Comment

By Stephanie A. Prendergast, MPT, Cofounder, PHRC Los Angeles   Interstitial Cystitis/Painful Bladder Syndrome (IC/PBS) is considered a chronic overlapping pain condition (COPC) and it is common, affecting up to 12 million people in the United States alone. The good news is – it’s treatable!   Symptoms of IC/PBS can include, but are not limited too: Urinary urgency, frequency, and …

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2023: Year of the Rabbit, A (2022) Year in Review

In Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy by Stephanie PrendergastLeave a Comment

By Stephanie A. Prendergast, MPT, Cofounder, PHRC Los Angeles   Welcome 2023, goodbye 2022! It’s been another year full of changes for Pelvic Health and Rehabilitation Center. With the start of the new year, we would like to acknowledge all of the changes that have occurred both virtually and in person.   Last year….. PHRC Pasadena opened in January 2022, …

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Prostatectomy: Facts, Complications and How Pelvic Floor PT Can Help

In Male Pelvic Pain by Stephanie PrendergastLeave a Comment

By Stephanie A. Prendergast, MPT, Cofounder, PHRC Los Angeles   Let’s Talk Prostatectomy Facts   Although prostatectomy is a very effective surgical intervention for prostate cancer, there are some common symptoms that can occur following surgery that each person undergoing this procedure should be aware of. In fact, only 22% of patients undergoing radical prostatectomy were sufficiently counseled on the …

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Postpartum Urinary Incontinence is Common: Here’s How We Can Help

In Pregnancy/Postpartum by Lauren OpatrnyLeave a Comment

By Lauren Opatrny, PT, DPT, PHRC Berkeley & San Francisco *all names have been changed to maintain patient privacy   Background   Rachel* is a 32 year old experiencing urinary incontinence after giving birth to her baby in December 2020. When she was eight months postpartum and still experiencing incontinence, her doctor referred her to pelvic physical therapy. Six weeks …

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How Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy Helped Megan Eliminate Rectal Pain and Bowel Dysfunction

In Female Pelvic Pain by Kim BuonomoLeave a Comment

By Kim Buonomo, DPT, PHRC Lexington   Introduction Megan (mid-50 year old cisgender female) started seeing me in September 2021. She had a history of bowel dysfunction since giving birth to her daughter in the late 1990’s. She described her symptoms as a pattern of alternating constipation and diarrhea, associated with bloating, hemorrhoids and abdominal discomfort. She thought for a …

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Pediatric Success Story: Constipation interrupting your kids’ activities?

In Pediatric Pelvic Health by Melinda FontaineLeave a Comment

By Melinda Fontaine, DPT, PHRC Walnut Creek Symptoms   Many families struggle with constipation in children. Maya is a 10 year old who likes to swim, camp, and play with her little brother. She had suffered with constipation and fecal incontinence most of her life. A year ago, an x-ray showed that she had an enlarged colon from chronic constipation, and …

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The 4th Trimester: Postpartum Pelvic Pain is Common but Not Normal

In Pregnancy/Postpartum by Emily TranLeave a Comment

By: Courtney Edgecomb, DPT Postpartum Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy is increasingly utilized to help new moms recover from pregnancy and delivery. Is pain normal after giving birth? Of course that is an extremely open-ended question and I would get different answers from almost every single mom (and from each of her pregnancies). But it is hard to tease out what …

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Stress Urinary Incontinence in Athletes: Why You Leak When You Exercise

In Bladder Dysfunction by Emily TranLeave a Comment

You may have heard murmurings at practice, the gym, in yoga, or maybe you’ve got your own experiences to share, of people describing incidences of urine loss while exercising. This is called Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI) and is described as a loss of urine associated with a stress to the body causing increased intra-abdominal pressure, such as running, jumping, lifting, …

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The Ankle Bone is Connected to the Pelvic Floor Muscle Function

In Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy by Shannon Pacella1 Comment

By: Shannon Pacella, DPT, PHRC Lexington With Halloween just occuring, I had been seeing skeleton decorations everywhere and it got me thinking about anatomy. Cue the ‘Dem Bones’ song we sang as kids – “the knee bones connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bones connected to the hip bone,” the ankle bones connected to the pelvic floor…wait, I didn’t …

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Posture and the Pelvis: Part Deux

In Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy by Emily Tran3 Comments

    “Share the load” – Samwise Gamgee “It’s all about the base ” – Meghan Trainor “Drop it like it’s hot” – Snoop Dogg   Some different quotes from last time, but after reading today’s post you’ll understand how Samwise, Ms. Trainor and Dr. Dogg are all talking about posture and the pelvis, and they didn’t even know it.   …

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Reducing perineal trauma during labor and delivery

In Pregnancy/Postpartum by Stephanie Prendergast2 Comments

By Stephanie Prendergast, Cofounder, PHRC Los Angeles   Who doesn’t love a crowning baby cake? If our image didn’t catch your eye the title of this post probably did if you are pregnant or thinking about becoming pregnant. Last week we presented a pelvic health quiz about the role of the pelvic floor muscles play in childbirth. This week we …

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What women do and don’t know about childbirth and their pelvic floor muscles

In Pregnancy/Postpartum by Stephanie Prendergast1 Comment

By Stephanie Prendergast, MPT, Cofounder, PHRC Los Angeles   Recently, a number of studies were published on what women do and don’t know about their pelvic floor muscles, childbirth, and longer-term pelvic health.   How much do you actually know? Take our quiz and find out! If you do not know the answers, don’t fret. You are amongst 93% of …

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Beating the Odds: How one woman overcame a traumatic birth and had a successful second birth

In Pregnancy/Postpartum by Emily Tran2 Comments

Childbirth is no picnic: 85% of women who deliver vaginally experience perineal trauma and a third of those women in the USA and UK require stitches.2 The thought of having another baby after having gone through a traumatic birth can be daunting, to say the least. Returning to sex can also seem like a feat, especially when pain is involved. …

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Why All Postpartum Women Need Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy

In Pregnancy/Postpartum by Stephanie Prendergast5 Comments

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 …

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A Mesh of a Situation

In Female Pelvic Pain by Elizabeth Akincilar7 Comments

  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 …

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Gwyneth’s Goop and the Pelvic Floor: What They Missed

In Female Pelvic Pain by Stephanie Prendergast4 Comments

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 …