If you call our office, chances are we will talk to you about biofeedback. When we talk to a prospective patient, we will discuss how we are different from many insurance based providers or pelvic floor therapy that is at your urogynecologist’s office. We don’t believe in biofeedback based treatment using computerized biofeedback. Not sure about what biofeedback is? Click here to read about biofeedback.

Why exactly do we have such strong beliefs around biofeedback? Here are six reasons we aren’t a fan of biofeedback.

1. Many pelvic floor therapists use biofeedback for the entirety of their course of treatment, meaning that you will get biofeedback at your first visit, second visit, third visit… We think you get the point. Pelvic floor physical therapy should be progressive. You should be progressively challenged more over time. Your first session should look vastly different from your last session. You should be able to do things in your last session that you wouldn’t dream of doing in your first.

2. Computerized biofeedback is a computer, meaning it glitches. Sometimes these glitches can take an entire rehab session to work through. If you are going to “pelvic floor therapy” with a tech at your Doctor’s office, that is ALL they know how to do. Therefore, if the computer isn’t working, you can’t get your therapy and you just wasted your precious time.

3. Most of the time, it is performed with the patient lying down. MOST of our patients have ZERO symptoms when they are lying down. Therefore, what is the practicality of using this and how does it actually help you function better? Function trains function meaning that if you want to run better, you have to run (among other things), if you want to squat better, you have to squat, if you want to swim better, you have to swim! If you don’t have symptoms lying down, your treatment needs to consist of things other than lying down exercises.

4. There is a lot of interference! What does this mean? In a perfect world, the biofeedback unit would ONLY pick up whether the pelvic floor muscles are contracting. However, it isn’t that perfect. In fact, you can perform an incorrect pelvic floor contraction and the computer will tell you that you are actually performing the contraction appropriately because it picks up a contraction from a nearby muscle. So, if the goal is to strengthen the pelvic floor, but the computer isn’t even correctly picking up a pelvic floor contraction, you are once again wasting your time.

5. It assumes that the pelvic floor is the only thing that is playing a role in your symptoms. Chances are, it isn’t. Pelvic floor muscle strength depends on SO MANY other things. How we use our core, how mobile our hips are, how strong our glutes are, how much emotional stress we are going through and how we carry ourselves (our postures and how we move) all can affect how the pelvic floor functions. Therefore, performing pelvic floor contractions while lying down will typically not be enough to strengthen the pelvic floor. We need to train the pelvic floor muscles with the other muscles and joints of our body.

6. You can’t take it home with you! Unless you buy a home unit, it isn’t something that you are able to work on at home. And remember, those at home units have even more glitches, and even more interference than the professional units.

We aren’t totally against biofeedback and think it can be valuable, especially in the beginning of pelvic floor rehab. Eventually however, we want you to be able to feel how your body should be moving. Remember, there are many forms of biofeedback (a mirror, your hand, even an ultrasound). You don’t need wires and electrodes to tell you what your body is doing.

Going to boring pelvic rehab with biofeedback and kegels? Call us!