BewellConnect’s MyPeriTens Multi-Action Pelvic Floor Trainer

BewellConnect recently unveiled their new pelvic floor muscle trainer to help women with related issues, including post-partum complications and incontinence. The MyPeriTens device is both an electrical nerve stimulator and electrical muscle stimulator that is controlled through a smartphone app, allowing women to have precise control over the intensity and nature of the electrical signals delivered. The smartphone app has a number of routines built in that the woman can perform on her own, or with assistance of a physical therapist. Each routine can be selected to run at the patient’s preferred intensity level, maximizing benefits while keeping any pain and discomfort at a minimum. Read more.

Source: Medgadget, February 15, 2018

A Revolutionary Design in Pelvic Floor Weakness Treatment

It’s more common than hay fever, yet women just don’t talk about pelvic floor weakness, a condition resulting in intermittent urinary leakage. It affects one in three women in varying degrees of severity — 82% consider their symptoms severe, while 70% wear absorbent pads to deal with it. Yet, 68% of women never seek medical help. “Women are embarrassed. It’s called stress urinary incontinence and they associate the word ‘incontinence’ with old ladies being wet all the time,” says Dr Ruth Maher, an associate professor at the Department of Physical Therapy, Creighton University in Omaha. Maher is one of the original four inventors of recently launched innovotherapy, a non-invasive treatment for pelvic floor weakness. Innovotherapy directly targets pelvic floor weakness — the root cause of urinary leaks — unlike many other treatments which simply mask symptoms. Read more.

Source: The Irish Examiner, April 3, 2017

New System Uses Remote Medical Monitoring, Mobile Games to Improve At-Home Pelvic Floor Muscle Training

Urinary incontinence is any involuntary urine leakage. It is a condition that can be more or less severe and it affects one in three women of all ages, which is more than 56 million people in Europe and more than 350 million people in the world. It is not a normal part of ageing and has a negative impact on the quality of life of the women who suffer from it. The main risk factors for urinary incontinence are pregnancy and childbirth, overweight and obesity, and high-impact sports. There are several treatments to improve or cure its symptoms, depending on the type of incontinence, and it can also be prevented by taking measures before it appears. One approach that has proven effective in preventing and treating stress urinary incontinence is pelvic floor muscle training. It consists of a programme of contraction and relaxation exercises for the muscles that form the base of the pelvis. If the treatment is followed and performed correctly with the supervision of a therapist, the rate of cure/improvement may reach 70% .Read more.

Source: News-Medical.net, March 9, 2017

What You Need to Know to Put the Brakes on USI

Urinary stress incontinence (USI) affects 25 per cent of women over 40 with the incidence increasing with age. It’s defined as a loss of urine often with cough, sneeze, laughing, running or lifting. Yet despite the prevalence of this condition, many women do not seek help until symptoms become severe and have been ongoing for at least two years. Factors contributing to USI are childbirth, pregnancy, menopause, low back pain, weight gain and smoking. USI responds well to conservative non-surgical treatment with the first line of treatment often being pelvic floor strengthening exercises under the supervision of a physiotherapist. Physiotherapists often use biofeedback and electrical stimulation to help reeducate these muscles. Read more.

Source: The Chronicle Herald, February 8, 2017

Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises

This is a diagram of the male pelvic floor. Men and women can both do pelvic floor muscle exercises to help strengthening the muscles located in their pelvic floors to help control urine leakage.

Pelvic floor muscle exercises make the pelvic floor muscles stronger. Strengthening these muscles may help you have more control over leaking urine during times of physical stress, such as laughing, coughing, or sneezing. These exercises are often referred to as Kegel exercises.

Everyone has a pelvic floor. The pelvic floor is a group of muscles that form a hammock shape in your pelvis. Pelvic floor muscles hold up the pelvic organs and keep them in the right place. In women these organs are the uterus, bowel and bladder. In men the same muscles hold the bowel and bladder. The muscles of the pelvic floor can become weak and can start to sag. This can happen because of injuries, pregnancy, childbirth, or surgery (including prostate surgery and hysterectomies). The muscles can also become weaker from carrying extra weight, or from chronic coughing. Continue reading→