Remember that kid song, “The Skeleton Dance”? If you don’t have kids or it’s been awhile, its the one that goes:
The toe bone's connected to the foot bone,
The foot bone's connected to the ankle bone,
The ankle bone's connected to the leg bone,
And so on and so on.
That was probably many people’s first introduction to the parts of the body and the connectedness between them. But the connections in the body go much deeper than just the bones and muscles being connected together. Our thoughts, emotions, stress levels, habits, movement routines, and diet all tie into our body’s function.
Let’s take a quick anatomy review
At the top of the body, is our head, which houses our brain. The brain is the control tower for the rest of the body. Full of synapses and nerves, it processes all of the information it receives and then sends information back out to the body. Our nerves are the super highway that relays this information to the brain. And they run all the way from the top of our heads to the tips of our toes, going in and out of muscles, organs, and bones.
Our extremities are a dense network of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones that work together to allow us to move freely in 3D.
Surrounding the nerves, muscles, tendons, ligaments, etc is fascia. Fascia is the connective tissue that provides a mobile network for everything to move smoothly and connects every part of your body together. This is called tensegrity. This fascia is integral in healing. It is what compensates for injuries or traumas, even minor ones you don’t even realize have happened. It can thicken and strengthen to support an injured structure or may stretch and lengthen in another direction to help adapt to injury. See the video below for further information on tensegrity.
YouTube video on Tensegrity: https://youtu.be/BzgxYpDyO0M
And of course, let’s not forget the inner core piston. This is the powerhouse of the body and gives us support, strength, and stability in our posture to allow free movement of the extremities. If this is not balanced or working correctly, then movement and body functions will be dysfunctional.
With these principles identified, we can then conclude that nothing works independently in the body. And that pain in your knee, may actually be related to trauma in another area of the body, because the lines of tension in the fascia are pulling causing the pain in another area.
But the actual structures of the body are not the only connections to think about.
When you have pain, weakness, leaking, or any kind of symptoms or dysfunction, anatomy is important. But, we also need to take into account psychosocial aspects and how these factors such as sleep, diet, and stress also impact the body’s functions.
Stress
Who isn’t stressed? If you aren’t, I’d like to know your secret! Everyone gets stressed. Work, parenting, social obligations. The majority of the world’s population lives in a stressed-out system. And don’t get me wrong. We need a little stress in our lives to function. But the amount that most of us carry with us is too much.
When you’re stressed, your body produces cortisol. In small amounts, cortisol is ok. But when we are constantly flooded with it, our GI system can go offline, it can cause sleep problems, increased anxiety, systemic inflammation, and it can cause your pelvic floor muscles to tighten up, also called hypertonicity.
When our nervous system is constantly ramped up from being saturated with cortisol, our body goes on high alert. And suddenly pain, weakness, leaking, or any symptoms you may be having are intensified.
Sleep
Sleep is so important for healing. This is when our body and brain get to rest and most of the repair of tissues occurs. Most adults need 7-9 hours of sleep a night to be adequately rested.
Lack of sleep can impair your ability to think clearly and concentrate. It also can cause your body to become stressed and release more cortisol. Do we see a pattern here?
And yet again, a lack of sleep puts the nervous system on high alert, increasing the sensitivity of our body to symptoms and pain. And since we are sleep-deprived our ability to tolerate and deal with these symptoms and pain is lower.
Diet
Did you know that our gut is home to over 70% of our immune system and is lined with more than 100 Million nerve cells- making it function like a tiny brain? New research has even shown that the gut has a direct connection with the brain!
With this information, it's no wonder why what we eat has such a tremendous impact on the body and our mood/brain.
When we eat on the go, or too fast, not taking the time to properly chew our food and prepare the digestive system for digestion it can disrupt the function of the GI system. And, if we eat foods that are not nutritious or are heavily processed, this can also impact gut function.
Poor digestion can lead to systemic inflammation in the body, which can yet again, increase the sensitivity of the nervous system. It also can cause constipation. When the bowels become backed up, you don’t get the proper exchange of nutrients into the body and waste and toxins aren’t being cleared from the body. When waste just sits in the colon, it gets harder and harder as more and more water is reabsorbed into the body. Hard stools can damage the mucosal lining of the colon, resulting in abdominal bloating, systemic inflammation, and joint pain and swelling. Trying to eliminate hard stools can wreak havoc on your pelvic floor as you strain to push it out.
What does all of this have to do with pelvic floor physical therapy?
Short and sweet, EVERYTHING!!!
When the body is totally ramped up from stress, trauma, injury, poor diet, and/or sleep habits, it’s really difficult to get results. Your pelvic floor can be hypertoned. You can have increased pain. Increased leaking. Pelvic organ prolapse. Or any other symptoms.
It doesn’t matter how many exercises or stretches or modalities we use to help your symptoms, if your body is not in an optimal state for healing, we won’t achieve the results we are both looking for.
Only by figuring out how to dial down the nervous system can you begin to heal. Taking a whole-body approach is the only way to achieve this goal. During the first evaluation session with me, we talk about your sleep. Your stress levels. Your activity levels. How is your diet? What is your home life like? Your pain. Your happiness. I’m gonna look at how you move all together, not just at a joint or not just at your pelvic floor.
We need to work together to figure out what else is feeding into your symptoms. Only then can we begin the healing process.
Have questions? Email me: Becky@budandbloomptaustin.com
I’ll be hosting my Free CORE+ Challenge starting January 1st! During this free challenge, you’ll get a different 10-minute core workout emailed to you for 30 days. Click here to get registered. Emails will start on January 1!