Dry Needling to Improve Pelvic Health: Postpartum Incontinence, Urge Incontinence, and Pain

Dry needling the pelvic floor and surrounding structures can be the answer to treating many of your patients impairments, from postpartum incontinence to general pelvic floor pain, and everything in between. Pelvic health issues are far more common than you may think, in both sexes, of all ages. Much of the time, with the use of needles, it is simple to fix all sorts of pelvic health issues without even exposing the genitalia. This makes the whole process a lot less intimidating to people.

Let's explore three examples below to show you just how powerful DN can be when it comes to treating pelvic health impairments.

Related: Click here for Lumbopelvic Dry Needling, Including the Pelvic Floor course information

DN for Postpartum Incontinence

Related: Click here to read more about DN for the Pelvic Floor + Incontinence

Postpartum incontinence is obviously a unique situation insofar as we know exactly what happened. A large thing went out a small hole, an insane amount of stuff got stretched (oweeee), and things stopped working properly. Now, the tricky part is coaxing things back to proper function. Before you can do that, however, one must be aware that an awesome, easy solution is possible.

How Pelvic Floor DN Delivers Good Results for Postpartum Incontinence

Let’s take an example of a past patient of mine: Female, had a normal, uncomplicated pregnancy 1.5 years ago. 28 years old, excellent fitness level. Leaked urine from time to time when running. Had low back pain (LBP). Runs about 3 miles a few times a week. Was in PT to address her LBP but mentioned during her third treatment that she knows its normal to have
incontinence-type issues following pregnancy, but did I think I may be able to help her with this issue, in addition to treating her lower back pain? I was so excited when she asked because I knew I could fix her problems.

First, it is NOT normal to have incontinence a year and a half after birth. However, the common public and medical perception is that it is just a part of life, you know? No, I do not know. Booo! Think about what happened to those muscles during birth. It’s a miracle anything at all works after that. Seriously. However, our bodies are mind bogglingly resilient, especially when we help out in just the right way. We really do have superpowers! Nobody should have incontinence without significant underlying structural or neurologic damage, like a spinal cord injury.

With simple dry needling to the pelvic musculature, this patient, like the majority of my incontinence patients, achieved complete resolution of her bladder issues in a few treatments. I never even had to expose the genitalia.

DN for Urge Incontinence

Another situation where dry needling the pelvic structures, is the inability to hold it when you feel like you have to go: Urge Incontinence.

As stated above, nobody should have any type of incontinence if they don’t have underlying structural or neurologic damage. I don’t care how old you are, how many pregnancies you have gone through, or if you are male or female. It does not matter. Almost all of this stuff is easily fixable with the proper tools and knowledge. The problem, mi gente, is that the vast majority of medical practitioners tell their patients incontinence is normal. This is unacceptable. Consequently, patients, in turn, believe incontinence is normal. Hint: Never believe anything anyone tells you without personally looking into it yourself. This especially includes medical people. Our medical system is 100% focused on keeping you partially sick for your whole life so they can sell you a million pills. Unless you have a doctor with a functioning brain who follows basic medical principles, like treating each patient as an individual, which seems increasingly rare as of late, you are getting bad information a large percentage of the time.

If you can’t hold it when you feel the urge to go to the bathroom, no worries. This, also, is totally fixable with dry needling.

How Pelvic Floor DN Can Help with Urge Incontinence

Another patient example (this was a student in one of my dry needling classes): Female. Excellent physical condition. Late 20's. Suffered from urge incontinence for as long as she could remember, ever since she was really little. As soon as she felt the need to go, she had to run to the bathroom. Could not hold it at all. I watched this happen the first day of class.

Like with the first patient I mentioned, I did not need to expose the genitalia to treat her. After one 15-minute treatment, she came back for the second day of class in complete disbelief. She could hold her bladder when she felt like she needed to go for the first time in her memory. She had tried to fix this problem numerous times over the years with no success. This was a PT, mind you. She had tried all the typical treatments: Medication, exercise, pelvic therapy, etc. She had not, however, tried the best treatment. The most magically effective treatment: Dry needling.

Dry Needling to Treat Pelvic Floor Pain

Maybe incontinence does not apply to you or your patients, but what about pelvic floor pain: pain with sex, testicular pain, genital pain, any type of pelvic pain? Dry needling the pelvic floor can also help these situations.

Pelvic health issues are not all accompanied by pain, although many of them are. Nobody likes being in pain unless they have something strange going on with them. For the guys out there, have your nuts ever hurt? A deep achy feeling, kinda like bigfoot has grabbed ahold of them? Ladies, how about vaginal pain, menstrual pain, or any type of pain in the pelvic floor? These impairments affect a massive amount of the population to some degree or other. Pain, incontinence, whatever, is way more common than you think. It is definitely more common than not with PT patients.

As with incontinence, the vast majority of medical professionals, and about 100% of the public, believe that having some type of pelvic floor pain is normal. Especially if you are older. Even more especially if you are an older woman with kids. But this holds true across sex and age. Again, pain and incontinence are not normal. Negatory! If you don’t have underlying structural or neurologic damage, nobody should have any of these impairments. I don’t care if you are 90 or 9.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, the most distressing aspect of incontinence-related impairments is the fact that it is so incredibly easy to fix without typical medicine, like pills. By learning the intricate art of dry needling (click here for pelvic floor courses), you will fix many impairments that most people assume they will have for life. This is a rewarding and fun experience.