Teamwork. Working for better Women's Health

In recent weeks I've had the pleasure of working alongside a number of other health professionals, all with the same aim - to improve awareness and understanding surrounding the field of Women's Health.

Collaborating to raise awareness, build a community and problem-solve is the best way to ensure a holistic approach to treatment. This gives us, as professionals, the best opportunity to ensure a woman in our care is supported through every stage of her recovery and return to fitness.

It's helpful to understand that the 'core' - the pelvic floor, abdominals, back muscles and diaphragm - also work as a team. One cannot function fully without the involvement of the rest, and if there are dysfunctions, mistimings, weaknesses or injuries we need to reconnect everything to restore the core back to normal function.

It is important to recover the function of the core before progressing with other exercise because it will affect how well we can perform other exercise, reduce our risk of injury and improve our chances of avoiding common problems such as bladder leaking, pelvic pain, abdominal pain, back pain and prolapse.

In physiotherapy we can perform a thorough assessment of your posture, breathe work, abdominal function, pelvic floor function, and nerve testing to identify any issues that can then be treated. Your physio can provide pain relieving treatments, address muscle tightness, weakness, overactivity, improve joint stiffness, scar tissue release, reduce nerve sensitivity and teach you ways in which to exercise to improve your symptoms at home.

Working alongside other practitioners such as Soft tissue therapists, Holistic Core Restore Therapists, Specialist exercise  trainers and Nutritionists allows for a multi-disciplinary approach, as we know that recovering from child-birth or surgery, going through hormonal changes and cycles (eg. The menstrual cycle, in pregnancy, Post-natal period, perimenopause, menopause) will affect each woman differently. This means different approaches are needed for every individual. Your capacity to heal, recover and get stronger is affected by so many factors including sleep, nutrition, exercise. Sometimes scar tissue can cause pain, limit movement or reduce muscle function so seeing a soft tissue therapist to relieve these problems could unlock the rest of the system for recovery. Once your physio has identified a cause of your pain or problem it may be that a referral to another specialist to work on some of the areas of concern will be the best way to ensure you are able to make a full recovery - as they say... "Teamwork makes the dream work!"

As I grow my network I'm listing other local specialists on my website (Local Links tab). If you have any queries about any of these services please do not hesitate to get in touch, I'm more than happy to point you in the right direction.

You can follow some of the events and collaborations I am working on via social media channels:

Instagram @physiotone

Facebook @physiotonepilates