

After 23 weeks of preparing these, I have started to get the other physios at my practice to put their minds to coming up with some ideas for more important knowledge bombs. They may learn and understand about only 20% of anything you teach someone at an initial consultation.Įvery week at our pain relaxation class, we present some Nuggets of Pain and Anxiety information – I usually create the one or two page information sheet which lasts just five minutes so that Martine Lange, one of my Women’s Health Physios and Pilates instructors can present it prior to the muscle and neurodynamic stretches, pelvic floor down-training, breath awareness and relaxation practice. Why? Because adults are notoriously bad learners! So the point is education is very important and passing on that information and the way you do that as a health professional- is very important. Men can be told they have prostatitis, when a more likely diagnosis may be an overactive pelvic floor causing pelvic pain, testicular and penile pain and even erectile dysfunction rather than an inflammation of the prostate. Medical people can even pass on dubious science about pain conditions. (‘Masturbation is a sin you’ll go to Hell if you have sex before you are married’) They also may have gone to a highly religious school, where other messages about sex were preached regularly and layer upon layer of guilt regarding, even thoughts of premarital sex, were being laid down deep in impressionable brains. Their knowledge base surrounding sex may have acquired from their best friend, who read about intercourse in their older sister’s Cosmo and was the chief informant for the girls at school. Many patients may have a pain issue with intercourse and any sexual intimacy.

The bad habit is entrenched and the ability to hold onto urine is diminished. It gets reinforced over the years – what your mother tells you is important and you dare not question it. So this ‘fact’ is repeated over and over within earshot, as children grow up and it definitely sounds like gospel. Their current knowledge may have been acquired from their mother- “I have a weak bladder, my mother and her sister had a weak bladder, you will have issues unless you go to the toilet before you leave the house each day”. So people start with varying degrees of knowledge about say, urinary incontinence. Much of what pelvic health physiotherapists do each day relates to educating women and men in a variety of topics related to the pelvic floor.
