What is a Women’s Health Physio?
Women’s health physiotherapists have a special interest in conditions specifically related to the female body (during all stages of life from puberty, pregnancy, menopause, and elderly) and have completed post-graduate training to better understand and treat them.
What Conditions Can A Women’s Health Physio Help To Treat?
Our trained and trusted physicians in Brisbane can help women with a range of female-specific conditions.
Their main focus is the health and strength of the pelvic floor muscles (which sit inside the pelvis like a hammock). These muscles support the pelvic organs including the womb, the bladder, and the bowel, as well as impact how they function.
When the pelvic floor is weakened, pelvic floor dysfunction can occur. These muscles are most commonly impaired during pregnancy and childbirth.
However, some women who have not been pregnant can experience pelvic floor dysfunction due to a range of reasons, including hypermobility (aka flexibility), chronic constipation, persistent coughing, drops in oestrogen after menopause.
Along with pelvic floor dysfunction and weakness, our physiotherapists can help with the management and treatment of:
- Lower back pain or hip pain during pregnancy
- Pelvic pain
- Urinary incontinence
- Urinary urgency (feeling like you have to rush to the toilet)
- Constipation
- Pelvic organ prolapse
- Abdominal Separation
A women’s health physio is also trained to guide you through knowing what exercise is safe for you during and after pregnancy.
How our Physios can Help at Different Stages Life Stages
Adolescence
Adolescence is a time of change and development. As your body grows and matures, your musculoskeletal system must deal with longer and heavier limbs, which can cause coordination issues and leave you vulnerable to injury. Seeing a physiotherapist to ensure the growing body recovers from any injury can minimise issues later in life.
Pregnancy
A woman’s body undergoes many changes quickly during pregnancy as it adapts in response to her growing baby and prepares for its arrival. Some of these changes can be uncomfortable or painful. When it comes to experiencing issues, prevention is often better than a cure, and acting quickly can prevent things from getting worse.
Here are some areas that our Women’s Health Physiotherapist can help with during pregnancy:
- Pelvic Girdle Pain
- Varicosities in the lower limb and pelvic region
- Carpal Tunnel
- Pelvic floor exercises
- Constipation
Click here to learn more about how physiotherapy may be beneficial during pregnancy.
Post-Partum
Giving birth can take a toll on your body, and in the months afterwards, your body is trying to repair any damage. It is also busy returning to normal size and starting milk production. There is a significant shift in hormone levels around this time as well.
Some areas that our Women’s Health physiotherapist can help with are:
- Return to Exercise advice
- Diastasis Rectus Abdominis Muscle (DRAM)
- Mastitis
Menopause
During this time, a woman’s estrogen levels drop, and this causes some unpleasant side effects such as hot flushes, bone density loss and mood changes, to name a few.
Out physiotherapists can help with:
- Advice on weight-bearing exercise to help bone mineral density
- Advice on exercise for weight loss
- Musculoskeletal physiotherapy for aches and pains
What To Expect At A Women’s Health Physio Appointment?
If you are visiting a women’s health physiotherapist at Inline Physio, you can expect treatment that is tailored to your specific needs. Our approach is about working together to address the cause of your symptoms and our management plans are created with long-term solutions in mind.
For those who have booked in to see one of our women’s health clinicians, we recommend you fill out our specific questionnaire relating to your pelvic floor prior to your first appointment. This will help us to fast-track your initial appointment, where we will continue the screening process.
During the first consultation, we will ask a lot of questions about past and present symptoms before performing any hands-on assessment.
Pelvic Floor Assessment
There are numerous options to assess a patient’s pelvic floor. While each method has its own benefits, we will discuss all options with you and consider what you are comfortable with.
Our assessment options include:
- Real-time ultrasound over the bladder (lower abdomen): this is a great way for you to see your own ability to contract your pelvic floor muscles and get feedback on how well you can contract them.
- Over the clothes pelvic floor assessment: Palpating the perineum for a pelvic floor contraction.
- Anorectal exam: This is not internal. It is looking at the contraction of your pelvic floor through the anus. This is more intrusive and will be only used if necessary and consented. The benefit of this assessment is that we can assess things that the ultrasound cannot see.
We use closed in rooms and take care to ensure you feel comfortable when assessments of the pelvic floor are carried out.
Trusted Women’s Health Physio in Brisbane
Here at Inline Physio in Brisbane, we can treat a wide range of musculoskeletal conditions as well as women’s health specific conditions.
If you are unsure whether we can help you, please give us our trusted team a call for a confidential discussion.
Ready to schedule an appointment? Click here to make a booking.
