How do I know if I have a problem?
If you answer "yes" to one of the following, you have a problem
You lose urine during exertion or coughing.
You can't "hold on" and you wet yourself.
You can't empty your bladder properly.
You have bowel soiling.
You feel a lump in your vagina (prolapse)
You have lower abdominal or pelvic pain.
How Serious is My Problem?
Assessment by the Patient
The question "how serious is my problem" is not so easy to answer, as symptoms vary, and patients' perceptions vary. A simple rule is to seek help if it is interfering with your quality of life. If the problem is mild and not bothersome, no action is required.
Assessment by the clinic
The doctor has a different perspective, a) to assess which ligaments have been damaged, and b) to assess the seriousness of the problem. An accurate assessment is paramount. The doctor uses various tests to decide which treatment to recommend.
Causes and Symptoms
When somebody has to go to the toilet many times a night, or can’t hold on dashing to the toilet, or has severe pains in her abdomen or thigh or lower back or other places in that area, the probable cause is loose ligaments. Before the Integral System of the action of muscles and ligaments in the pelvis was published, doctors had almost no treatments for these conditions….or a major operation which required weeks in hospital and a painful recovery.
The cause and cure was the breakthrough made by the Integral System. Strengthen the ligaments by special squatting exercises, supporting them using surgery to shorten them slightly (adding a tape to create new collagen if you have passed the menopause) , and the problem will improve or even disappear. And it’s often just a day or two in hospital to ensure that the body has returned to normal.
Nocturia
This is a condition which causes sufferers to wake up numerous times a night to go to the toilet to empty their bladder. The number of times can vary from three to eight or nine. The problem is that the interrupted sleep causes tiredness during the day, leading to lack of attention to tasks, or even accidents.
The cause of nocturia is looseness of the back ligaments (known as “uterosacrals”) which support the womb.
The cure, if it is available in your country, is simply to shorten and strengthen the uterosacral ligament. In younger women up to 50% improvement can be achieved with pelvic floor exercises.
The book, ‘Home and Dry’ gives full details of how this can be achieved.
Urgency
A syndrome called ‘urgency’ is present when the sufferer suddenly needs to go to the toilet, but is usually unable to hold on before reaching it. This causes soiled underwear and can be extremely embarrassing.
The cause of urgency is looseness of the ligaments which suspend the vagina, and usually, like nocturia, the back ligaments
The cure, if available, is the same as for nocturia. In younger women up to 50% improvement can be achieved with pelvic floor exercises.
Full details may be found within the book ‘Home and Dry’ by Dr Patricia Skilling.
Overactive Bladder
“Over Active Bladder” is just another name for urgency. The patient may or may not have nocturia and she may go to the toilet more than 8 times a day.
Bedwetting
Normally, it’s children who should be beyond the age of nappies who bedwet. But sometimes adults up to their mid to late 20’s or even their 30’s can suffer from this humiliating problem. Up until now, there has been no cure for bedwetting.
“Popular" cures, such as alarms to wake sleeping kids and take them to the toilet in the middle of the night do not cure the problem. All they do is disturb the sleep of mother and child. Nor does severely restricting fluid intake after five in the afternoon help. All that happens is the child wets with a smaller bladder volume. The problem is in the bladder control mechanism.
As you’ll read in this website, the answer is simply exercising of specific pelvic floor muscles which will cure the problem in a matter of weeks for almost all patients.
Details can be found in a book “End Bedwetting Now”.
Severe Pelvic Pain
Up to 20% of women suffer from the sudden onset of severe pain in the pelvic area, or the thigh, or lower back, or their vaginal areas Almost every medical specialist will say that they don’t know the cause. Many doctors will treat it with opioids with all their addictive consequences .
However, recent research has now shown that pelvic pain is most often caused by the looseness of the back ligaments which support the uterus (“uterosacral”). This ligament is adjacent to a nerve plexus, where many important nerves meet.
Because the ligament is loose, the plexus slips into a different position. When the nerve fires, then instead of the brain registering it where it should be, the brain locates the sudden and severe pain in the areas where the nerves usually go to, vagina (vulvodynia) tailbone, lower abdomen, anus and so on.
The simple cure is to tighten the ligament and restore the plexus to its normal position. In younger women up to 50% improvement can be achieved with certain pelvic floor exercises.
The book, ‘Home and Dry’ gives full details of how this can be achieved.
Constipation
Sometimes, sufferers from constipation wait for an inordinate amount of time for the wee or the poo to begin to flow. And no matter how much the sufferer strains, and no matter how desperate the desire to void, things just don’t happen.
The cause of either is because of the looseness of ligaments, or because the muscles to which the ligaments are attached, are under-performing.
The ligaments could have stretched during childbirth when the woman gave birth to a large baby, and from then the ligaments sprang back to normal because of the restorative power of estrogen.
But post menopause, when estrogen is no longer produced, the ligaments flop back and either leakage or constipation occur.
Certainly dietary and other measures may help. An important cause of constipation is looseness of the back ligaments which support the uterus (“uterosacral”)
The cure is the tightening of the uterosacral ligament, or in younger women up to 50% improvement can be achieved with pelvic floor exercises.
The book, ‘Home and Dry’ gives full details of how this can be achieved.
Extra Problems which may be caused by looseness in the Back Ligaments
Vulvodynia
A burning pain over the entrance of the vagina and anus. Extremely sensitive to touch. Often associated with dragging lower abdominal pain and sometimes, painful bladder conditions.
Bladder Emptying Difficulty
Typical symptoms are a slow stream, starting and stopping, dribbling after micturition has been completed, a feeling that the bladder has not emptied. Often such patients have chronic urinary infections.
Faecal Incontinence
Faecal incontinence may be described as uncontrolled soiling from the bowel. Typical symptoms, in order of severity, are uncontrolled wind loss, liquid soiling, solid faecal soiling. There are 2 main categories, patients with faecal incontinence caused by an anal sphincter torn at childbirth, and another where no obvious cause can be found. The anal sphincter constricts the lower part of the anus. It is what you feel when you contract your muscles to delay bowel emptying. Where no obvious cause can be found, it is called "idiopathic incontinence". It is the latter type of incontinence which we believe is caused by damage to the front or back ligaments.
Characteristics of Lumps (Prolapse) in the Vagina
A prolapse is a bulge or lump in the vagina. A bulge in the front wall of the vagina is called a cystocoele. A bulge in the back wall of the vagina is called a rectocoele. Descent of the uterus into the upper part of the vagina is called “uterine prolapse”. Symptoms may occur with large or even minimal prolapse.
Initially, these only appear during straining. It is not easy to self-diagnose where a lump in the vagina is coming from. The 3 main causes, bladder (cystocoele "2") uterus ("3") and bowel (rectocoele "4"), can only be definitively diagnosed by a vaginal examination, as not all lumps are accompanied by symptoms. In a symptomatic prolapse, the symptoms may give an indication of where the problem is. For example if a patient has a lump plus nocturia, pelvic pain and urgency, it is highly likely that she has weak back ligaments, as per the Diagnostic Diagram.