May is…National Physiotherapy Month and Pelvic Pain Awareness Month
What is Pelvic Pain?
Pelvic pain can be experienced:
- During or right after an injury to the tissues – post-partum, after gynecological surgery
- Long after that injury/event has passed
- Or maybe you don’t even have an event to relate it to – it just accumulated over time, experience pain with intercourse, pain with running, or sitting
- There are also other pelvic concerns that can cause pain: endometriosis, fibroids, cysts among many others.
Chronic pelvic pain is a significant issue in Canada …
- 14- 24% of females of reproductive age will experience it
- 14% women experience chronic pelvic pain at least once in their life – this is about 2.5 million Canadian women.
Some people think that pelvic pain is strictly a female issue. Unfortunately, pelvic pain is an everyone problem.
- It affects 8- 10 % of men of all ages
- It is associated with many negative consequences – psychological distress, poor sexual health, and lower quality of life
- Beyond the suffering of the individual, male pelvic pain is associated with a societal burden due to substantial healthcare costs
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain as,
“…an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience as a result of actual or potential tissue damage.”
Pain is complex and there are many contributors. As clinicians, in order to improve each individual’s experience with pain, we must work to understand what are the most responsible factors influencing their pain. Some of the most common contributors include: physical factors (tightness, injured issues), emotional factors, life stress (job status, family life, finances), overall health (other health/medical conditions), nutrition (hydration), sleep to name a few. The good news is that these potential factors influencing pain are also the solutions to improving the pain experience.
We are not talking about pelvic pain enough. Although it is common, it is NOT normal.
Pelvic pain can greatly affect our ability to live life fully. Different types of pelvic pain can cause people to experience pain with movement, sitting, sexual intercourse, inserting a tampon, getting a pap smear or having a pelvic exam.
If you have these concerns, please don’t suffer in silence. Get some professional help (psst, physiotherapy can do wonders!) so you can hopefully get back to all the joys in life and minimize the impact of pelvic pain.
The pelvic health physiotherapists here at ellephysio, are trained in detailed assessment, and use a bio-psycho-social approach, to understand what factors may be driving your pain and work with you to help create solutions for improvement. If this is you, partner up with a pelvic physio- it may just change your life!
If you are wanting to learn a little more about understanding pelvic pain, there is a FREE half-day virtual course on May 31, 2025, offered through International Pelvic Pain Society.
Resources:
Katz L, Fransson A, Patterson L. The development and efficacy of an interdisciplinary chronic pelvic pain program.
Can Urol Assoc J. 2021 Jun;15(6):E323-E328. doi: 10.5489/cuaj.6842. PMID: 33212006; PMCID: PMC8195579
Edvinsson, Magnus, Karlsson, Moa, Linton, Steven J., Brattgård, Klas, Solinger, Gabriel and Flink, Ida K.. “Male pelvic pain: the role of psychological factors and sexual dysfunction in a young sample” Scandinavian Journal of Pain, vol. 23, no. 1, 2023, pp. 104-109. https://doi.org/10.1515/sjpain-2021-0221
