I’ve Found My Pelvic Floor, Now What Do I Do With It?
Show Notes
You’ll laugh so hard in this episode, you’ll wet yourself. But then, learn how you can fix that wee problem of yours too!
Many of us probably never thought about our pelvic floor, until we had a baby. Perhaps you were sent home with exercises to tighten it up.But did you know, your pelvic floor can be too tight? Or that stress, hormonal changes, lifting heavy things, and even constipation can all potentially lead to pelvic floor issues?
We meet Courtenay Polock (Wodonga, VIC), who is an accredited exercise physiologist, specialising in women's health. She launched Her Exercise Physiology, which is a virtual clinic, helping women through video consultations.
It makes sense that many of her clients are rural women.
In this episode, we learn what causes pelvic pain, what a prolapse is, what happens if your pelvic floor is too tight and just about the way women's pain is treated in general.
Ever heard of a wandering womb? It's one of those lovely old phrases for women's problems that no one cared to understand back in the day… we talk about that too. So brush aside any awkwardness and hit play!
**Would you like to sponsor an episode of Ducks on the Pond and get your brand out here to thousands of rural women? Email us at ducksonthepond.podcast@gmail.com
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We're always like, oh, if I'm only peeing myself, then that's the pelvic floor problem, but in reality there is like so much more. I think the education side is lacking quite a lot and awareness around it.
Kirsten: 0:22
Oh yes, there is so much more. Hi, welcome to Ducks on the Pond brought to you by the Rural Podcasting Co. Just me today, Kirsten Diprose. But you're in for a very fun and educational chat. Many of us probably never thought about, or had even heard about, our pelvic floor until we had a baby, perhaps, and were sent home with exercises to tighten it up. Until we had a baby, perhaps, and were sent home with exercises to tighten it up. But did you know? Your pelvic floor can be too tight. All that stress, hormonal changes, lifting heavy things and even constipation can all potentially lead to pelvic floor issues.
Kirsten: 1:02
We meet Courtney Polock, who is an accredited exercise physiologist specializing in women's health. She launched Her Exercise Physiology, which is a virtual clinic helping women through video consultations, and it makes sense that many of her clients are rural women. We learn what causes pelvic pain, what a prolapse is, what happens if your pelvic floor is too tight and just about the way women's pain is treated in general. Ever heard of a wandering womb, for instance? It's one of those lovely old phrases for women's problems that no one cared to understand back in the day. We talk about that too, so brush aside any awkwardness. We even talk about internal examinations. You know what I mean. It's actually quite funny.
Courtenay: 1:44
Here's Courtenay so I currently live in Wodonga, Victoria, and I grew up in a city, Sydney, and I don't have a maybe direct connection to the rural farm life. There's a couple of things. So one I'm in a relationship with someone who's in the military, so we get posted around Australia quite a lot, so we see a lot of different areas and his background is actually cattle farming in up near Chinchilla in Queensland. So I have been around him and all of his family and seeing all that type of stuff from that perspective. But I, because I live this life of moving regularly, my business is all about exercise prescription for women's health. So I started in an in-person face-to-face clinic in a city where access to healthcare was extremely easy and you could choose who you wanted to and you just went wherever it was. And then, as I've moved around a lot more, I didn't want to reset up a clinic, every single location. So I moved online purposely for the ability for me to actually work and not have to change all of the time and find work. And because I fell into this online space, I started to attract a lot of women and they were like I can't believe I can get regular care without having to go anywhere and it got me thinking, as I was like seeing people in this area also traveling from regional towns and remote towns or rural areas, whatever they like, all into the sort of city of Wodonga to see professionals, and how difficult that actually was. I just honestly couldn't believe it. We went at uni. They teach you all about remote healthcare and access to services, and you just don't really get it until you've been exposed a little bit to someone who's trying to or you move there or someone's trying to access this, and it just blew my mind how hard that was and I just thought, like this service for me is so appropriate.
Courtenay: 3:40
I love women's health. I was such a big believer in really caring for yourself, but also a believer in being able to access quality care that actually helps. Sometimes the smaller towns don't have the ability for the practitioners to upskill well enough to like really specialize in something and help, and delivering online means you don't have to actually go anywhere. A lot of my clients have also been flying to towns and staying overnight to get a physio appointment or a women's health physiotherapy appointment to have internal pelvic floor work done, and then it's. I can't really do that every week. It's not realistic. A lot of my service now is it is all solely online for the purpose of helping the community that can't access this and be able to get that more specialized care. So I do a lot of pelvic health stuff. That could be anything from pelvic pain pelvic floor problems. It could be like prolapse based issues. I do a lot of fertility exercise prescription to help optimize reproductive health. So I'm in that space of like women's health.
Kirsten: 4:36
We're very glad you're part of it, because I think something you said really hit home and that was about in a lot of towns you'll have a few specialists, but someone who understands specific women's health issues and specifically pelvic floor issues is really tricky. How often do you find that women come to you and they've been diagnosed with other things or told to do things that really are not going to help them at all?
Courtenay: 5:04
things or told to do things that really are not going to help them at all. Oh, a lot so much, because it is like you said, they don't know specific things in regards to itself. They might have a little bit of knowledge, but maybe not direct, specific tailored knowledge. And I only do that pelvic health. And I think when we think about some practitioners typically in that allied health space, they seem to do a bit of everything. So you get like a musculoskeletal physio who does a little bit of everything and then a little bit of everything. Same with exercise physiologists. So that's technically my title and they are good at a little bit of everything, but I decided to just go down this pelvic health route for women's health. So there's other parts of women's health that I could dabble in, but I just believe you have to do it really well and, to you know, provide really good quality care. And I think with the pelvic floor topic like it, is a little bit taboo. It's only really now really being spoken about quite a lot. I don't think I knew.
Kirsten: 5:56
I had a pelvic floor. You know, like when you're at school and you learn about periods and uterus and all of that sort of stuff, I don't think I knew I had a pelvic floor. I mean I had a pelvis right, but I never really thought about the pelvic floor?
Courtenay: 6:12
No, and nobody does. I ask that in my consults. I'm like, do you know where it is? And they're like it's there inside somewhere, but no, not really. And then I show them the model of what it looks like and they're like, oh, that's not what I was picturing and they don't know what it does other than it's a muscle and hopefully there's no problems.
Courtenay: 6:29
When I have a child, that's pretty much like what it's linked to and there is so much involved with it outside of that one function that we can get a lot of dysfunction and cause all of these other problems which we don't recognize as pelvic floor problems. We're always like, oh, if I'm only peeing myself, then that's the pelvic floor problem. But in reality there is like so much more. I think the education side is lacking quite a lot and awareness around it and I really feel like the only time people talk about it is if you're pregnant and had a baby and you're talking to your mom friend who's like also in that situation, oh my gosh, my pelvic floor, like I'm peeing myself, but it's so many other phases of the female life cycle can impact its function, so like we've got issues with, even like a chronic health condition, like if you've got endometriosis that's going to severely impact your pelvic floor crazily enough, and it doesn't even mean you've had children. So then there's, you've. Like, your menstrual cycle plays a role in the tissue function.
Courtenay: 7:23
Stress plays a huge role in it and that is something I think would be super important for that, like the rural communities, based on the amounts of different stress that they have in life. But also things like menopause and also, obviously, childbirth and pregnancy, labor, things like that really do play a big role and that's the only thing that's really really recognized and it's always related to that. But that's only one thing. Even chronic coughing issues can cause problems, or heavy weightlifting without proper pelvic floor control can cause risks of prolapse and things like that. So males also have pelvic floor problems. Just so you know it's also a problem.
Courtenay: 8:02
We're not isolated. It's not just the women thing, but we don't. They don't even talk about that at all. That's another whole, nother topic. It's just something that's not really spoken about. So you don't really know what's going on and you just go oh, I won't really talk to anyone because it's embarrassing, and don't really know who to talk to. And if you do talk to your GP, they're like oh, just do some pelvic floor exercises. My first encounter with my pelvic floor was obviously through childbirth.
Kirsten: 8:27
I know it's there now, and it was about tightening it up, and I always became obsessed with it because the exercises and to they told me it was like doing up a zip to use the muscles start from the bottom up and do up a zip to use those muscles yeah. But what can pelvic floor pain mean, though? It's more than just, as you mentioned, the childbirth and the kind of recovery after carrying a child.
Courtenay: 8:52
Yeah, great question. Because in regards to pelvic floor function or let's say it's, I want to call it damage, or like disruption to its function through pregnancy and birth, it gets stretched quite a lot. So a stretchy muscle is sometimes really loose and someone once talked to me about it flapping in the wind feeling and that was just like, yeah, tighten it up, and sometimes that is actually the right thing for someone to do. However, it has a lot of other roles. It supports your organs, which is why, if we have weakness through there or dysfunction, let's call it it's not working properly you can end up with a prolapse. So that's where you've got. Let's think about it more like your organs are being held up by connective tissue and that gets damaged, and then the organs of your pelvis so uterus, bladder or bowel can descend downwards and start to I don't want to say fall out of the body, because they never really fall, but they start to protrude at the entrance. So you'll have prolapse based issues, but that can also be from lack of pelvic floor support. But then we it also plays a role in pelvic stability, so it's underneath, attaching to everything and when we like, brace your core, it's part of that system. So if you're moving around quite a lot and it doesn't really do its job very well, then stability is an issue. So we can get things like hip problems and hip pain or low back problems and low back pain or tailbone pain and things like that, because the system isn't really doing its job very well. So your stability is a little bit all over the place and we start using other muscles to do that and we get problems there. It also has a massive role in sexual function, so our ability to orgasm plays a role in this, and it can be also pain during this time.
Courtenay: 10:26
So one thing that's really common and problematic is pelvic floor tightness, and this is something that a lot of women actually suffer from and don't really know that it's there and this would look like a muscle that is actually too tight, and doing an exercise like a pelvic floor kegel we call them kegels or your zipper exercise will actually make the problem worse, because we're tightening a muscle that's already too tight and it needs to learn how to relax a little bit better or lengthen. So imagine like it's a muscle that is well functioning, shortens on the contraction and then lengthens on like a more relaxation phase, and a muscle needs to be able to do both of those to work really well. Functioning shortens on the contraction and then lengthens on a like a more relaxation phase, and the muscle needs to be able to do both of those to work really well. So if it doesn't know how to do that, that can manifest in issues of pelvic pain, because it's like attaching and pulling on everything and causing tension, get lots of pelvic pain issues like hip pain, back pain, tailbone pain. That's all mostly problematic around pelvic floor tension issues.
Courtenay: 11:20
We can have issues with constipation, so basically getting anything in or getting anything out is going to be a problem because mostly problematic around pelvic floor tension issues we can have issues with constipation. So basically getting anything in or getting anything out is going to be a problem because everything's tight and closed off. So think like difficulties with bowel movements or not feeling like you can fully empty, issues with bladder retention and not being able to fully empty the bladder, or like maybe even feeling like you go to the toilet and then all of a sudden you feel like you're finished, but then there's more and you're like, oh, I've got a second pee happening, like, what is this? Or you get up and it's a little bit dribbles out. That's like tension based issues, irritation and urgency, like you've got a UTI but there's no UTI. No bacteria is there. You're getting these negative tests. It's almost like the nerves being compressed inside the pelvic floor and it's sending signals to the brain that you need to go, but there's nothing really there.
Kirsten: 12:04
So that can be a symptom of that too like how does your pelvis become too or your pelvic floor become too tight?
Courtenay: 12:12
yeah, if you actually try and do pelvic floor rehab yourself and you do a lot of kegel exercises or pelvic floor squeezes because someone's told you to do that it, it can become too tight. So it's almost like contracting and contracting and contracting and sometimes you haven't practiced letting it relax as well. It'll just get too tight and it can become a problem because you've just over-trained the muscle. It can also become tight because it responds to different changes that happen in the abdomen. So we have this thing called like intra-abdominal pressure, which is basically how we create stability in our system to move off. So if you're lifting something heavy, you need some pressure in there and that helps you stay stable.
Courtenay: 12:51
We have these other muscles that work together with that in the abdominal wall and often, more than not, if something happens to that muscle group, then something else in the system will contract up really hard to take up the slack. So things like a cesarean section delivery most likely end up causing pelvic floor tightness, space issues, because the abdominal walls had a surgery and it's been chopped through and people can't connect to it really well. So something else has to go. Oh, I better do something to hold everything in and keep stable so it can happen from that.
Courtenay: 13:20
It can happen from trauma and that can look like emotional trauma, sexual trauma, physical trauma, like I get a lot of women who end up falling off horses and bash their hips on the ground and then get all of this dysfunction through their pelvic floor. That causes them problems and it's usually like tension on one side of the pelvic floor versus both, so you can also have that A lot of stress and anxiety. So we have a protective mechanism of pelvic floor contracting when we go through bouts of stress and so if you're in a situation where you're always stressed and you don't have that downtime or managing that very well, that can also lead to a lot of tension-based issues.
Kirsten: 13:57
And is that just because when you're stressed you're like tightening your muscles? Or is it like cortisol, or how come?
Courtenay: 14:04
Yeah, it's tightening. So there's a really interesting study that was done on showing women threatening and disturbing images and that could be from just generally disturbing and not that not sexual based. Then there was like sexual threatening and then there was a couple of other ones and then some neutral ones, so there was a variety in these and that they measured muscle activity in the pelvic floor when shown these images and they were all high in all threatening situations without doing anything. So all they were doing is just watching this image clip on a screen and they had muscle contraction and squeezing and holding in the research in the results which shows us this emotional connection and threatening-based response. So when we think about guarding mechanisms, we contract and squeeze and we grip through there. So if you're always doing that because you're always stressed, then it can stay like that Same sort of thing as like over-tightening, and then I suppose once you're out of that stress, you might still have that issue because you have tightened it.
Courtenay: 15:04
Yeah, yeah, or we just haven't taught the muscle how to relax very well. Everyone's had a muscle injury where you've maybe you've seen like a therapist for it and they've taught you oh, we need to strengthen this muscle. This one's a little bit tight. We need to retrain it. It's exactly the same as the pelvic floor, except it presents itself in different symptoms. Instead of having like shoulder pain or knee pain, you have leaking, constipation, irritation, all this stuff that's not pain-based necessarily, but discomfort. So it's the same thing. We need to teach it how to relax and contract properly and then strengthen it accordingly. It is a little bit hard to navigate because it's also inside right. You can't see it. It's not where you can lift up something and see muscle changing and know that it's stretching more.
Kirsten: 15:44
Oh, but you women's health people, you get in there. I know you do. Oh, yeah, we do. I don't because it's a bit hard in the online space, but you can go to people and they'll test the strength of it, essentially. Have you had one? Yes, I have. Living in a rural town. It's funny because she's actually a friend of mine.
Courtenay: 16:05
So she's like, let me check him out.
Kirsten: 16:08
You don't have to, obviously, if you don't feel comfortable. And I was like you know what, let's just do it. And I can't believe the story that I told my husband. When I got home I said oh, guess what I did today? And he laughed so hard he was like, oh, this is.
Courtenay: 16:32
That's funny because I've actually had one too, not for any reason, but I wanted to experience it to explain to clients what that actually felt like and what that would do. And it was also my friend who was the physio
Kirsten: 16:49
My friend was great.. She's like I do this all the time. This is very clinical and whatever, and I was like I've had kids, whatever. Let's just go.
Courtenay: 16:56
That's so funny, so you know exactly what it's like. So I would imagine, though, that a lot of the like having that are you close to someone, like how far is it for you to get to town?
Kirsten: 17:05
About 50 minutes yeah.
Courtenay: 17:07
It's not too bad.
Kirsten: 17:08
Yeah, I don't want to say too much more. Everyone will figure out who it is.
Courtenay: 17:14
It's not like there's heaps of women's health people.
Kirsten: 17:17
Everyone's Googling that right now.
Courtenay: 17:19
Yeah, yeah is really awkward.
Kirsten: 17:21
I think you just got to push through whatever awkwardness there is about anything, because that's why we're having this conversation today, like it's about our health and our happiness and life and ability to do stuff. My pelvic floor was really causing me regular pain and that's not a way to live.
Courtenay: 17:40
No, and that's something I feel passionate about. I've had training background so I'm like resistance training, strength training. I've done some CrossFit before and some power lifting and that makes me feel so great, and I've had a history of pelvic pain before. I also had these issues when I was younger I was only 20. I don't have children, so it's definitely not children related but I was having leakage issues in CrossFit and skipping was the nightmare and I just used to think it was like oh, women have poor bladder health, like whatever.
Courtenay: 18:08
I laughed with all the mums and all the other non-mums were like what, what do you mean? There's nothing worse than being like I really want to get better at skipping or running or jumping or lifting, except you have all these like other problems, like really holding you back that you have to deal with, and that's what I feel is something that a lot of women just kind of like oh well, I just will never do that again and I'll just avoid it, or I won't jump on the trampoline with the kids. Get your father to do that, because I can't, because it's such a problem and it's not very fun and it's nothing should hold you back from doing things that you just love.
Kirsten: 18:43
I think anyway. But I think it even extends even to pain and the way that women's pain is thought about. And there's this really good but chilling podcast that's out. It's in the US and it's talking about fertility treatment and about how these women who were going through IVF were going through incredible pain and no one believed them. There were multiple women and they were calling the doctor saying I'm fainting because of the pain, I can barely move, and it turned out that they were getting these procedures without any pain relief because there was a nurse who was working on there who was a drug addict and taking the fentanyl and replacing it with water or saline. But it went on for so long because there were women going. I'm in incredible pain but no one took them seriously.
Courtenay: 19:29
Oh, that just breaks my heart because I see so many problems in that with the population.
Courtenay: 19:35
I see a lot of endometriosis clients because they have a lot of chronic pain and they get a lot of pelvic floor tension-based issues and they can't do anything because it flares up.
Courtenay: 19:41
And then if you went down into the chronic pain and they get a lot of pelvic floor tension-based issues and they can't do anything because it flares up and then if you went down into the chronic pain science, it ends up being this like nervous system changes that happen, that then everything becomes hypersensitive and sometimes the stimulus that used to cause the problems that isn't there anymore is actually removed and the pain sensation is still there.
Courtenay: 20:01
But that diagnosis to get anything, someone to even diagnose endometriosis, a chronic pain condition that women constantly are trying to seek help for because it's so uncomfortable, is years like actually years. Like so many of them have just been going through like people that are like, oh, they've just said I've got this issue and it'll be resolved or it's not really that bad, and they're just like they're off work every single month with chronic pain and no one is really taking it seriously and most of the time the diagnosis takes so long, but it's just such a it seems like such an issue that I feel like I don't feel like I've ever really heard men talk about this. I might be biased there, but pain is the worst, and once you leave pain for too long and it goes into that chronic pain cycle, that becomes even more problematic.
Kirsten: 20:54
That can lead to other health issues. Your mental health can deteriorate and all those sorts of things.
Courtenay: 21:00
Yep Everything as soon as something starts to be so draining on your system emotionally and mentally, like that, and physically. There's so many other parts of you that like think about what happens when you feel just feel a bit crap for the day and you're like withdrawn from people and you're not really doing things that you love, and then you're not exercising very well, so your physical health is starting to change and it's just one thing after the other and then it's really hard to get out of that rut because doing a little bit becomes so difficult.
Kirsten: 21:24
And another thing I think is part of our culture is that easy fix of prescription drugs. Oh, we've got a bit of pain here, take some Nurofen, take some Panadol or whatever, but you're not treating the problem, and I love that. When I sought help for my issues, they were easily doable. Things that just work together, like just adding more fiber into my diet, doing some different exercises, and it resolved the problem. It probably took a month and a half or two, but it got there. No pain relief required.
Courtenay: 22:00
Yeah, isn't that crazy. Every time I've been to the doctor to talk about a problem I've been like, oh, we can give you this, and I'm like I actually don't really want anything. I just wanted to know if I could explore what is causing the problem, not so much like the actual symptom and just masking it with a bandaid. And I honestly think that the body like from my background, science-based body, like I think about it like physiology. We're exercise physiologists. We learn about the molecular level of the body and how it can change, and the body is designed to adapt to a lot of different things and stimulus. We talk about it as being like if you exercise you will get fitter, but you have to do the exercise because your body needs to know it's challenged in order to then change that. So there are so many things that we can do to change the physiology of our body and resolve these problems. It just takes a little bit of commitment and a bit of time, but that's never really going to change. That's going to change things differently to taking medication, right, like you're just masking the symptom of the problem, not the actual solution. So when it comes to things that are just like, like pelvic floor issues, for example. There are heaps of things that you can do and sometimes they're not the one size fits all for everybody. You need to like design the specialized protocol for you, cause if you've got tightness, you don't want to be doing tightening exercises You're going to make it worse. But if you're got some more weakness based issues, you don't want to be relaxing too much. And then we look at what else is feeding into it. So you've just talked about fiber.
Courtenay: 23:24
Dietary issues or concerns really do cause problems with the pelvic floor as well. So if you've got pelvic floor dysfunction, tightness or weakness and you're constipated and you're always pushing out or you can't get it out, that's even worse for the tissue. So then we can look at we've given you some exercises, now we can look at your diet. We look at your stress management, because that's feeding into your problem. Hormonal irregularities are also problematic because a lot of women's symptoms will change throughout their menstrual cycle. So it's like a bit of a whole body approach, really, and it's not just about oh, here you go, take this. I've had too many women also with pelvic floor have surgeries that aren't really needed, where they could have done a lot of training, so they've just been like yep, we'll just fix it, we'll just do some surgery and you'll be fine.
Kirsten: 24:05
What kind of surgery? Surgery is not something to ever do lightly. I think Like you got to do it if you got to do it, but yeah, what kind of surgery.
Courtenay: 24:14
So there's like a sling surgery that you can have to have like more support. Some of my clients have had bulking agents injected into there so that the actual bulk muscle tissue bulk can be, I guess, bigger and provide like some closure mechanisms to the urethra so that urine doesn't come out. But most of the time it's either sling related. So providing a little bit more support rather than just training the muscle to do that, sometimes it's really needed. If there's like serious muscle damage, then, yes, prolapse support surgery is another one that gets done quite a lot and that is something the recurrence of re-prolapsing after surgery is actually quite high and that's based on you still need to teach everything to keep to work better. Because if you're, the reason why prolapse usually comes around is because we're pushing too much pressure downwards. So birth obviously that's pretty obvious. You're pushing your child out there's, you know, in a vaginal delivery.
Kirsten: 25:04
So what happens in a prolapse?
Courtenay: 25:07
We've got basically the downward descent of one or more organs coming downwards.
Kirsten: 25:12
So there's stages of prolapse.
Courtenay: 25:14
We've got stage one. Let's just talk about it from like a uterine perspective. The uterus would descend or drop slightly from its resting position. Stage two would be like it's coming further down. Stage three is you have a look in the mirror and it's at the entrance of your vaginal opening so you can now see it bulging outwards. So stage four is now it's like outside, so you get it rubs on your underwear. It's uncomfortable, it's a heaviness and dragging, so it's like feeling like a heavy tampon is going to fall out. I don't have one, so I don't actually know if that's that's the description of most people, that they. It's bulging, heaviness, dragging, sometimes burning and pain. So that stuff is. That kind of problem is irreversible. It's there, but the symptoms can be managed. So we can give it more support so that it's not ever going to go back to its resting position, because the actual damage, the tissue damage, is. You can't really fix that, but you can provide support to hold it up. So we can use pessaries which are like insertional stuff.
Kirsten: 26:11
How do they happen? So obviously childbirth and repeated birth, but is that the main cause of it?
Courtenay: 26:17
It usually is related to this, mostly because the tissue gets, it goes under a lot of strain. So imagine, like excessive strain, that, like I think about it like an elastic band. When you've stretched an elastic band way too much and it just never goes back to its shape. It's like that. As we push a lot of pressure down, the supporting structures become really weakened and damaged. So it's injury to those tissues. But sometimes the actual childbirth itself isn't really the problem. It's just created a little, a lot of weakness.
Courtenay: 26:46
And then we go about life for weeks, months, months, years doing things that add load down. So you're lifting really heavy and that's a lot of pressure in your trunk that pushes down on the organs and creates more load. Coughing and vomiting ongoing is downward forces. Anyone that's had really bad respiratory conditions will say after a month of this I was like weighing myself because it's a lot of load and we're weakening the tissue over time. Chronic constipation, that's huge amounts of load downwards all the time, repetitively, straining like power lifters can have really bad prolapse because they're lifting so heavy all the time. Or even recreational lifting, like farming Imagine all the stuff that everyone does.
Courtenay: 27:29
That's like constant strain on the body and if you're not super strong or you're not, maybe you don't have the pelvic floor support and you don't know how to move very well. You can cause a lot of damage from that. So it's usually something that either is there from childbirth and it was the actual birth, or it's something that's developed a little bit later and comes about a bit more slowly. And then we take into consideration menopause. That that's like lack of estrogen changes all of those tissues and makes it even more weak, or can contribute to that. So they'll usually start to present in symptoms then because it's not really been that much of a problem or it's not really causing symptoms. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, it's like what's happening, I've got this prolapse and it's the support is just not there anymore. Like what's happening, I've got this prolapse and it's the support is just not there anymore, so it's it's a hard one to navigate.
Kirsten: 28:18
I always remember, when I was a child, my grandmother, was diagnosed with a wandering womb.
Courtenay: 28:22
Have you?
Kirsten: 28:22
heard of a wandering womb and I think that is. I thought it might've been a prolapse. Is that what that?
Courtenay: 28:27
Yeah, it makes sense. It's just wandering around down there.
Kirsten: 28:40
Yeah, it's one of those awful terms that's been around since, like medieval or ancient Greek times, and it's associated with hysteria and the idea of women and pain. But I always just remember it because as a young child I thought what a bizarre thing and I had such a weird image about it that I just remembered that term. It might've been endometriosis, or maybe it was a prolapse, but a wandering womb, and it used to be associated with being very emotional as well.
Courtenay: 29:05
Oh wow, I love that there's no real scientific diagnosis. It's just like this lady. I feel like she's emotional and things are happening. We'll just call it wandering womb.
Kirsten: 29:14
She's a bit crazy.
Courtenay: 29:16
Yeah, I feel like that's a really great name for just like a group of women doing a community thing like that. It sounds great. I like it, it's great.
Kirsten: 29:22
Oh, you should make an exercise class called the wandering womb. The wandering womb oh my gosh, that is great, oh great. I can't wait to see it. It could be online. I'll attend and we can do it. Yeah, pelvic health for women Wandering womb. I wanted to ask, finally, if you could change things tomorrow for women's health, and particularly in your area of expertise. What would you do to make it better for women, particularly living in the country?
Courtenay: 29:56
for women, particularly living in the country. Yeah, I would love to have a more, a bigger virtual healthcare system specialised for that, purely for the access to services, really trained up and streamlined, ease of use, things like that. That was all areas of women's health, so I just do pelvic health, but there's so many other things that need to be addressed. That would be so great to create something like that for that, for the population of rural women who just can't get anywhere. They just can't access it that easily.
Kirsten: 30:22
Shall we say so yeah, yeah, and just something like the pelvic health and we women, we always put ourselves last but and we shouldn't but. When it's like, oh yeah, going to that class, that is good for my regular health, but if I miss one, it's not the end of the world, it's not but. And that's how it all begins and that's why we don't go to these appointments, even though they're so good for us.
Courtenay: 30:44
Yeah, yes, and it's something that requires. It does require a bit of commitment, right, like you can't just go once and then it's done.
Kirsten: 30:51
And when it's an hour away and you've got young kids and a job and things like that. It just gets hard.
Courtenay: 30:58
Yeah, it's almost like in the too hard basket. I'll just live with it. That'll do until it's really problematic.
Kirsten: 31:04
But where can people find you? Because the online thing will probably be quite a solution for many women.
Courtenay: 31:10
Yeah, so I'm mostly through Instagram. You'll see a lot of my stuff through there. There's a lot of education on there, so if you're actually also not sure what's going on for you, it's a great place to just start stalking content and learning a bit about it. So my handle on Instagram is herexercisephysiology. I also have a website, herexercisephysiologycomau. Those are probably the two places that you'll find me easily.
Kirsten: 31:33
And do you do one-on-one appointments?
Courtenay: 31:34
Yeah, all of our stuff is consult-based work with one-on-one care, mostly because exercise prescription does need to be a little bit individualized. However, I do have some eBooks on there. I've got a couple of free eBooks ones for prolapse, ones for tightness, for anyone wanting to learn a little bit more about that and what you can do right now to help yourself or get started, and there's a couple of free exercises in there. And then there's a couple of other programs in there for people that maybe aren't ready to commit to one-on-one stuff. But that's all through my website and my social media, so you can go browse all that if people are interested in getting some help.
Courtenay: 32:09
But I'm always open to talking about things. I believe that you have to find things that are a really good fit for you, Offering a lot of either. I do a lot of pre-consult stuff, that's let's make sure I can help you through here and you've got the right setup for this type of stuff as well. I think it's really important to be really well informed about what you're signing up to when you do something for your health.
Kirsten: 32:28
Absolutely, Courtenay. Thank you so much. I've learned a lot, so thank you yeah welcome.
Courtenay: 32:33
Thanks so much for having me.
Kirsten: 32:40
It's been so great openly chatting about healthy floor and all the goods of the female anatomy. And that's it for this episode of Ducks on the Pond. I think I may have overshared, but oh well, that's what breaking the taboo is all about, right? Thank you to Courtney Pollack. You can find her on Instagram at her exercise physiologist or on her website. You can also find us Ducks on the Pond online too, and on Insta. Now we only have two more episodes of Ducks to go before the end of the season, so if you'd like to sponsor an episode, you better get in quick. Send us a DM over Insta or email ducksonthepondpodcast@ gmail. com. Our next episode is a big one. Seven rural women in the one episode. Entrepreneurs unite. That's all I'll say. Thank you for listening. My name's Kirsten Diprose and I'll catch you then.
