Burning after sex isn’t normal. Learn what causes it and how pelvic floor therapy at Vivid Women’s Health in Doylestown and Newtown, PA can help you find lasting relief.

If you have ever experienced symptoms such as pain during sex, peeing your pants when laughing, coughing, or jumping, or have experienced bowel concerns such as hemorrhoids, or pain during pooping, you are not alone. These are all signs and symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction, a vague term that describes a problem with the muscles that sit in the bottom of your pelvis, called the pelvic floor muscles.

The pelvic floor muscles play a vital role in core strength, bladder control, bowel control, and intimate wellness. Every person, regardless of gender and age has a pelvic floor. If someone is experiencing concerns with their pelvic floor muscles, it is imperative that they see a pelvic floor physical therapist and attend pelvic floor therapy.

When a woman is dealing with stress incontinence, it is a sign that her body is not doing something it should. Stress incontinence can often be managed conservatively with pelvic floor physical therapy. 

Physical therapy for stress incontinence is a highly effective, evidence-based treatment that can help you stop leaking and feel confident again—without surgery or medication.

If you’ve ever experienced leaking pee as a female, you’re not alone. In fact, up to 50% of women leak pee at some point in their lives. Leaking pee, also known as urinary incontinence is tied to decreased quality of life and can significantly affects a woman’s social life. Experiencing urinary leakage is also a top reason why women stop participating in an exercise routine. While leaking pee can feel embarrassing, it’s actually very common and often treatable.

Many times, women are told to “just do Kegels” but unfortunately when it comes to painful intercourse, strengthening exercises such as Kegels can make your symptoms worse. 

One of the top questions that we as pelvic floor PTs get asked by patients is: “Why am I peeing so much all of a sudden”. When a patient is peeing more than 8 times per day, and more than 1 time at night (for anyone that isn’t pregnant or over the age of 65), we consider that urinary frequency.

When someone is asking about “peeing so much all of a sudden”, we really have to understand if they are truly peeing more than normal, or if they are actually peeing more than is considered normal. If they are truly peeing more, especially all of a sudden, we need to investigate a few things.

We are thrilled to announce that we have opened a pelvic floor physical therapy location in Doylestown, PA!

Throughout the last 5 years, we have helped thousands of women of Bucks County improve bladder, bowel, sexual pain, and orthopedic pain symptoms. With a special interest in pregnancy and postpartum PT, we are thrilled to bring great care to the Doylestown community.

Having a burning sensation during intercourse is very common. Unfortunately, many women are told that this is something that they have to endure, or they aren’t given true strategies to help resolve it.

A burning sensation during intercourse can happen due to a number of reasons

There are many strategies that we can utilize to help patients stop the urge to pee immediately. While these techniques can be effective, they are short term solutions to a larger problem.

When someone is experiencing an extreme urge to pee, we really need to investigate why that urge is happening.

In order to stop urine leakage when coughing, we have to figure out why you are leaking in the first place. There are a number of reasons why somebody might be leaking urine when coughing: It is happening because the pelvic floor muscles are weak. It is happening because there is port coordination of the pelvic floor muscles colon meaning that the muscles are relaxing when they should be contracting. There could be a prolapse or downward displacement of the bladder.

One of the top questions that we get asked as pelvic floor physical therapists is “how to prevent diastasis recti”?

In order to answer this question, we need more details about that patient asking it. 

Frequent urination is something that has been quoted to affect up to 40% of women. Often times women interchange frequent urination and urinary urgency or overactive bladder, however the conditions are very different.

Private physical therapy is gaining popularity over the last few years. We all know that in recent years healthcare quality has become severely compromised. Many patients leave a healthcare experience feeling like just a number, and not getting answers to the questions they are looking for. 

Since many providers don’t have adequate time to spend with a patient, this leads to patients needing to see more providers, and spend more time at the Doctor’s just to try to get a solution to their symptoms. The physical therapy field is no different.

Back pain is very common during and after pregnancy. One of the top concerns that we as pelvic floor physical therapists see is postpartum back pain. Postpartum back pain treatment managed by a pelvic floor physical therapist is extremely effective. In order to understand what postpartum back pain treatment looks like, we first must understand why the back pain is there in the first place.

Recurrent urinary tract infections are frustrating for patients, especially when they don’t understand why they keep happening.

To answer the question of “why do I keep getting urinary tract infections” there are several things we need to investigate.

Even though back pain during pregnancy is common, it is never normal. Many times, patients are told that pregnancy aches and pains are “par for the course” without given much direction on how to relieve sever back pain during pregnancy. There are many things that can be done to relieve severe back pain during pregnancy, with the most important being pelvic floor physical therapy.

Urine leakage while running is a common concern for runners. Some studies report that to 40% of runners struggle with urinary incontinence. Many choose to just wear a pad and continue running, however we caution anyone against this as this can lead to compensations and further problems down the road. You should never leak when you run and if you experience leakage, you should stop running at the mileage point where you experience leakage. A quick solution, might be to take a small break mid-run and then try to resume running only continuing if you can do so without leakage.

One of the many symptoms of constipation is left hip pain. Left hip pain and constipation are related because of the way that the bowel runs and ends around the left hip. Since stool is heavy, when the rectum or bowels are filled with stool that is unable to pass, this puts excess weight on the pelvic floor muscles and surrounding hip muscles.

Many patient struggle with recurrent UTIs (Urinary Tract Infections). Sometimes though, patients have UTI symptoms but no UTI present with urine cultures. This can frustrate patients because they have a difficult time finding relief of their symptoms with traditional UTI remedies. So what exactly is causing this and what can you do to remedy the symptoms?

A feeling of heaviness in the pelvic area is a common concern that patients report in pelvic floor therapy. Heaviness can be the result of many things. Pelvic floor PTs aims to determine what you are describing (does it feel like a bulge, like something is there, like a soreness, or like true heaviness?). We also need to determine exactly what might be contributing to the feeling of heaviness.