This post was written by Allison Ariail, PT, DPT, CLT-LANA, PRPC, BCB-PMD. You can catch Allison teaching the Pelvic Floor Level 1 course in May in Los Angeles.

Dysmenorrhea is the medical term used for painful menstruation. Symptoms usually begin 1 or 2 days before or the first day of menstruation and include headache, low back and thigh pain, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, and excessive fatigue. Sixty percent of women suffer from dysmenorrhea, with many of these women being incapacitated for up to 3 days each month due to symptoms. There are two types of dysmenorrhea. Primary dysmenorrhea is menstrual pain that is not caused from another disorder or disease. Secondary dysmenorrhea is menstrual pain that is due to a disorder in the pelvic organs including endometriosis, fibroids, adenomyosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, cervical stenosis, or infection. In the past, treatment approaches for primary dysmenorrhea have included the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, hormonal contraceptives, vitamins, and acupuncture. There have not been many studies that look at how physical activity influences the degree of pain for women with primary Dysmenorrhea. However, clinical experience has shown me that some women who begin exercising regularly decrease their dysmenorrhea symptoms compared to what they previously experienced. So I have done a search to find some studies that address this matter.

A Cochrane review found only one study that used a control group. In this study, the experimental group participated in a 12-week walking or jogging program at 70-80% of heart rate range, 3 days a week for 30 minutes. Moos’ Menstrual Distress Inventory was used to measure outcomes. This was given pre-training, post-training, and during the premenstrual and inter-menstrual phases for the three hormonal cycles measured. There were significant lower scores on the Moos’ Menstrual Distress Inventory during the menstrual phase in the group that participated in exercise compared to the control group. Additionally, there was a negative linear trend in scores over the three observed cycles for the training group with no linear trend seen in the control group.1 So the exercise group lessoned the degree of their symptoms over the three months by participating in the walking program!

This post was written by H&W instructor Allison Ariail PT, DPT, CLT-LANA, BCB-PMD, PRPC, who will be presenting Pelvic Floor Level 2B in Houston at the end of February.

Dyspareunia, or pain during or after intercourse, can be very upsetting and frustrating to a woman. One cause of dyspareunia is vaginal dryness. As estrogen levels decrease, the vaginal tissues can have less moisture, elasticity, and become thinner. This not only can affect postmenopausal women, but also post-partum women, and women who are on estrogen-blocking medication due to cancer or for treatment of fibroids. One of the common and effective treatments for this vaginal dryness includes estrogen creams, or hormone replacement. However, what does a woman do if she is not able to use an estrogen cream, due to an estrogen receptor positive cancer? One possibility is hyaluronic acid. Hyaluronic acid is a substance naturally found throughout connective, epithelial, and neural tissue. You may be more familiar with hyaluronic acid as the substance injected into joints for osteoarthritis. However, there have been some recent published studies comparing the use of hyaluronic acid to estrogen replacement.

In 2011, Ekin et al. published a study comparing the use of hyaluronic acid vaginal tablets with estradiol vaginal tablets. Two groups of postmenopausal women with atrophic vaginitis were studied. One group used estradiol vaginal tablets (n=21) for 8 weeks, while the other group used hyaluronic acid tablets (n=21) for 8 weeks. Outcomes consisted of the degree of vaginal atrophy, vaginal pH, vaginal maturation index, and a self-assessed 4-point scale. Both groups had relief of vaginal symptoms, improved epithelial atrophy, decreased vaginal pH, and increased maturation of the vaginal epithelium. The group on estradiol did have greater improvements, however, it was determined that the hyaluronic acid vaginal tablets was effective enough to be considered an alternative treatment for those who wanted to avoid the use of a local estrogen treatment.

This post was written by H&W instructor Allison Ariail PT, DPT, CLT-LANA, BCB-PMD. Allison will be instructing the Pelvic Floor Level 1 course Boston this October.

Several weeks ago some of my fellow faculty members and I were discussing the resting tone of the pelvic floor. These days we take it for granted that we know there is constant low-level activity in the pelvic floor and anal sphincter in order to provide continence. However, how did this information come about? I took it upon myself to do some research to find out the beginnings of this knowledge. What I found was interesting and thought I would share.

In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s the belief was held that the pelvic floor and external anal sphincters were inactive at rest, like other striated muscle throughout the body. Activity was believed to be initiated by afferent impulses from the rectal ampulla and anal canal. In 1953 Floyd and Walls found activity in the external anal sphincters at rest, even during sleep. In 1962 Parks, Porter, and Melzak published a study examining the pelvic floor muscles and the external anal sphincters using electromyography recordings. They also found activity in these muscles at rest. They hypothesized the activity was maintained by spinal reflex. These researchers looked at the activity in a healthy population, a paraplegic population, and a population that had undergone a rectal excision. When examining the paraplegic population (all subjects had complete SCI injuries above L3), they did identify activity of the pelvic floor at rest.

This post was written by H&W instructor Allison Ariail, PT, DPT, CLT-LANA, BCB-PMD. Allison will be instructing the Care of the Postpartum Patient course in Houston in June.

As Mother’s day weekend approaches, I take time to think about the dramatic changes in life that occur with the birth of a baby! No one is quite prepared for how much their life will change with the birth of their child, especially their first child! There are numerous changes that occur in a woman’s life during the pregnancy and into the postpartum time, both emotionally and physically. Any woman who has had a baby knows our bodies do not revert back to the exact body we had prior to pregnancy. New moms may be left with changes in their body that can greatly affect their function. Physical therapy in the postpartum time can greatly improve a woman’s well-being and function. We can treat a woman for back pain, diastasis rectus separations, incontinence, thoracic outlet syndrome, nerve damage that occurred during delivery, and many more issues a woman may present with. We also are a listening ear for the new mom going through many changes and hormonal upheaval. It is important to stay open and listen in a non-judgmental way. New moms are inundated with unsolicited advice in a way that no other patient population is. Having a safe place to come and get treated physically can help her emotionally as well.

During pregnancy and the postpartum time many habits are formed that if not changed can influence and shape how a woman lives the rest of her life. For example, night time voiding is common for pregnant women. If a woman continues to void every time she gets up with the baby in the middle of the night once she delivers, she may continue or even worsen her habit, thus creating an issue that will greatly affect her overall sleep health and well-being for the rest of her life. Having an objective person educate a woman about some of these habits can be very enlightening for an individual!

This post was written by H&W instructor Allison Ariail, PT, DPT, CLT-LANA, BCB-PMD. Allison will be instructing the Rehabilitative Ultrasound course in Seatlte in May.

In the past decades, evidence has been established showing the importance of the local stabilizing muscles, including the transverse abdominis, the lumbar multifidus, and the pelvic floor muscles on the stability of the pelvic ring and lumbar spine. Many therapists have embraced this knowledge and incorporate a specific stabilization program into their plan of care for patients with dysfunction in the lumbar spine or pelvic ring. This plan of care can be more time consuming for the therapist since we are no longer simply prescribing strengthening exercises to the patient, but instead are using neuromuscular re-education to retrain recruitment patterns and improve motor control. For many patients, learning to activate these muscles can be very difficult and frustrating. This is where biofeedback comes in. For years, women’s health therapists have been using biofeedback to retrain the pelvic floor muscles. Biofeedback is the process of bringing unconscious physiological processes to consciousness and gaining control over it. These same principles can be used in retraining the lumbar multifidus and the transverse abdominis, in addition to the pelvic floor. Currently, biofeedback methods used in treating low back pain include rehabilitative ultrasound imaging (RUSI) and the pressure cuff. My preferred method is using RUSI. This tool not only provides biofeedback for the patient but allows for real-time assessment of the muscle activation. Thus, providing the clinician valuable feedback on timing of recruitment and strategy used by the patient that would not be assessed with palpation alone.

Giggins et al recently released a literature review that covered different forms of biofeedback used in rehabilitation. Interestingly, there is little evidence to support the use of pressure cuff. Some of the research reported found significant increases in gluteus medius and internal oblique activity. In 2013, Grooms et al also determined that correlation and likelihood coefficients indicate that the pressure cuff is likely of minimal value to detect transverse abdominis activation. I personally have had patients referred to me from other therapists to confirm whether or not they were activating their transverse abdominis. In previous treatments, the patients had been using the pressure cuff and palpation by the therapist as confirmation of proper activation. What I found was consistently the patients were not achieving good contractions in their transverse abdominis muscles. Most of these patients were able to learn in one or two sessions how to properly contract their transverse abdominis, and were later able to progress to performing a co-contraction of all the local stabilizers during motor tasks.