Pelvic Floor Dysfunction Therapy

What is Pelvic Floor?

Pelvic floor is a group of muscles found in the floor (the base) of your pelvis (the bottom of your torso). If you think of the pelvis as being the home to organs like the bladder, uterus (or prostate in men) and rectum, the pelvic floor muscles are the home's foundation.

Both men and women have pelvic floors. So it is not just a women’s health issue but a men’s health issue for pelvic floor dysfunction.

pelvic-floor-dysfunction-tcm-therapy

Common issues from Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Pelvic floor dysfunction is the inability to correctly relax and coordinate the pelvic floor muscles. Common issues that can result from the dysfunction:

  • accidentally leaking urine when you exercise, laugh, cough or sneeze

  • needing to get to the toilet in a hurry or not making it there in time

  • constantly needing to go to the toilet

  • finding it difficult to empty your bladder or bowel

  • accidentally losing control of your bladder or bowel

  • accidentally passing wind

  • a prolapse

-in women, this may be felt as a bulge in the vagina or a feeling of heaviness, discomfort, pulling, dragging or dropping

-in men, this may be felt as a bulge in the rectum or a feeling of needing to use their bowels but not actually needing to go

  • pain in your pelvic area

  • painful sex

Reasons for Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

  • intense stressful lifestyle

  • pregnancy

  • ongoing constipation and straining to empty the bowels

  • being overweight or obese

  • heavy lifting (e.g. at work or the gym)

  • a chronic cough or sneeze (e.g. due to asthma, smoking or hayfever)

  • previous injury to the pelvic region (e.g. a fall, surgery or pelvic radiotherapy)

As you can see from above, the common theme here is overworking of pelvic floor muscles that leads to Pelvic Floor Dysfunction.

TCM for Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

For Pelvic Floor Dysfunction, Traditional Chinese Medicine can extend their help not just at the physiological level of the muscles but also from the functional and energetic level.

In Pelvic Floor Dysfunction as mentioned, the energy of the Pelvic Floor is going upwards too often to cater to the ‘push and go’ stress that individual put on their body, leading ultimately to the weakening of the entire system’s energy and hence the prolapse of the whole floor muscles.

In TCM, there are herbs and treatments such as acupuncture that can help with recovering the energy or qi of the individual so that the normal upliftment to maintain the tone of the Pelvic Floor muscles can be regained. Not only that, with the energy or qi of the person regained, symptoms such as chronic fatigue, poor sleep, energy dips that comes along with prolonged stressful lifestyle can be addressed as well. This is the good kind of “strengthening” for the person with the dysfunction and not to “overwork and damage” the muscles again with just physical exercises that sap energy instead.

Psychosomatic therapy for Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Other natural alternative therapies that can help with Pelvic Floor Dysfunction are Body-based trauma/tension release, Somatic Yoga which delve into the deeper psychological and emotional issues behind such dysfunction as it is recognized in such holistic medicines that the pelvis is the seat of emotions and any dysfunctions have strong correlations to the emotional and mental well being of individual.

Xiang Jun Lim