Picture this: it’s your quarterly meeting – a three-hour slog. You’ve prepared your slides and have all your reports ready to go. Your morning commute is brimming with confidence.
You push open the office doors, when suddenly, a creeping doubt slithers into your head: “What if I have to go?”
It’s just one of the many intrusive thoughts – in both business and personal settings – that can come with pelvic floor dysfunction. UROSPOT’s Ottawa locations offer treatments to strengthen the pelvic floor using high-intensity focused electromagnetic energy to stimulate and strengthen the pelvic floor muscles, helping with symptoms such as bladder leaks, urgency, night waking and sexual dysfunction.
UROSPOT is Canada’s premier pelvic health centre, combining technological innovation with personalized care plans to treat and restore the pelvic floor.
UROSPOT and the muscles most of us forgot
The pelvic floor is an often-overlooked muscle group that supports the pelvic organs. Like any muscle, neglecting it can have serious health consequences – from unexpected and embarrassing bladder leaks to night waking and reduced sexual function.
Bladder leaks and urgency impact as many as two of every three women over the age of 50, and on average those women take six years to seek treatment. And all that time, those muscles get weaker every day.
Kris Ouimet, owner of two UROSPOT locations in Ottawa, says her clients range from 21 to 95 years old. She says it’s important to identify and treat dysfunction early, before it becomes serious. “It’s very common, but it’s not normal,” says Ouimet.
“You shouldn’t be living with it,” says Ouimet. “We’re often told by doctors that it’s just part of getting older and we need to get used to it. But that’s not true.”
Managing symptoms, or just making them worse?
Pelvic floor dysfunction can creep up on you – by the time most people take action, a significant amount of strength has already been lost. Indeed, how a person responds to their symptoms may make things worse in the long run. Here are just few examples of problematic behaviour:
- The “just-in-case” pee: It’s common for people to go to the bathroom just in case – say, before heading into a meeting – even when they don’t need to. What people don’t realize is that this behaviour can lead to less bladder control and more leaks in the long run.
“Every time you go pee and you don’t have to, you are reprogramming the neuromuscular signal between your brain, your bladder, and your pelvic floor,” says Ouimet. “Over time, it starts to signal early. We back ourselves into that corner.” - Trying too hard to go: When we’re in a rush, whether at work or home, we might try to get your business done quickly by pushing too hard when urinating. But that kind of excessive force is damaging to the muscles that control the urethra, and weakens their ability to hold fluids back. “You should always be relaxed and take your time,” says Ouimet. “It might add 30-60 seconds to your day, but it’s so much healthier for the pelvic floor.”
- Consuming acids and irritants: When the pelvic floor is weakened, irritants can increase the sense of urgency and frequency of leaks. Naturally acidic foods like tomatoes and lemons can be a serious bladder irritant, but some culprits are more insidious: Carbonated water, or even avoiding fluids altogether, can increase urine acidity, irritate the bladder, and make leaks hard to avoid.
The UROSPOT approach: Prevention and restoration
While a weak pelvic floor may sound difficult to fix, UROSPOT’s approach to pelvic physiotherapy offers a stress-free solution – even for busy businesspeople.
UROSPOT offers a comprehensive treatment plan that combines education, coaching, and technology such as the Kegel Throne, a Health Canada-approved medical chair that uses electromagnetic energy to stimulate the muscles of the pelvic floor. Unlike other treatment methods, the UROSPOT approach is completely non-invasive; you don’t even need to disrobe.
- Through bi-weekly sessions over the course of three weeks, patients rebuild strength in their pelvic floor without the stress of home Kegel exercises, invasive procedures or surgery.
- That means a few convenient stops at UROSPOT’s atmospheric and friendly treatment center every week – it’s just like going to the gym for your pelvic floor.
“We work closely with pelvic floor physiotherapists,” says Ouimet. “They create a care plan that we help our clients to implement, but we do the Kegel exercises for them.”
UROSPOT’s treatment is often a welcome relief for those struggling with pelvic floor dysfunction. “Our clients often don’t realize how much mental capacity this condition takes to manage,” says Ouimet. “When you solve that for them, they’re free to be themselves again and really focus on life.”
But Ouimet says proactivity about the strength of your pelvic floor is the best solution – before you need treatment.
“We can’t give you a new pelvic floor,” she says. “But we can restore the one you have as much as possible. You need to strengthen your pelvic floor in order to treat and to reverse the damage that’s been done and prevent it from getting worse.”
