Yesterday when googling "rectal tension" I came across mention of a book called "A Headache in the Pelvis", and actually spoke (twice!) on the phone with the research MD who wrote it. Basically, I think my problems (and maybe my IBS) are related to pelvic floor tension.
quoth dr. david wise
| This condition often involves: |
- having a sense that there is a golf ball in the rectum that can't be dislodged
- urinary frequency and urgency
- dysuria or burning during or after urination
- a need to urinate even after one has just urinated
- some sense of pelvic discomfort
- no evidence of infection in the urine or prostatic fluid
- no evidence of disease in the prostate or elsewhere in the pelvic floor
| The majority of urologists tend to propound the second and third theories. Because of this, their treatments tend to focus on the use of antibiotics or pain medications. Sometimes urologists will tell their patients that there may be a microbe responsible for the problem that still has not been identified.. |
| Below I want to discuss the first that prostatitis as a condition of chronic tension in the pelvic floor. In this view, everyone deals with the stresses of life by focusing their tensions in different parts of the body. For instance some people tense in their necks and heads and get headaches. Some tense in their gastrointestinal tracts and get irritable bowel syndrome or constipation. Some clench their jaws and get a condition called TMJ syndrome. Some subset of these people develop pain and dysfunction in their heads, gastrointestinal tracts, jaws etc. as a result of this chronic focus of tension. |
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Similarly, prostatitis as a tension disorder sees abacterial prostatitis/prostatodynia essentially as a 'headache in the pelvis" or "TMJ of the pelvis". In this view it is a condition usually manifesting itself after years of tensing the pelvic muscles. It usually tends to occurs in men who hold their tension and aggression inside. They squeeze themselves rather than lashing out at others. Often they have work in which they sit for long periods of time and the only way they have found to express their frustration is to tense their pelvic muscles. This tension has become a habit with them. Often they do not know they tense themselves in the pelvic floor.
this sums it up perfectly for me; i've always had anxiety problems and am under new stress at a job where I sit down a lot. I'm going to start yoga and some meditation training next week, and am very hopeful that stress reduction and possably physical therapy will help me control the symptom of both my pelvic pain and my IBS. | |
Post Edited (spengler) : 11/17/2005 5:42:36 PM (GMT-7)