SOS for the pelvic floor
He was about 25 years old and remembers being “bounced” all day, tiptoeing around during training and always bouncing. It was these continuous jumps that caused hypertonicity of the pelvic floor, the muscles that support the pelvic and abdominal organs, and this dysfunction ultimately became the cause This young high-level taekwondo fighter started losing urine in young years.
Sitting on a fitball while a classmate is teaching in her studio, Naza Tilve from Vigo addresses first-hand a topic that remains taboo among women to this day and also remains unknown: leakage of urine and prolapses resulting from various pathologies affecting the pelvic floor. “I was lucky that when this happened to me we had a specialist physiotherapist and she started talking to us a bit about body awareness work, Kegel exercises and especially abdominal hypopression. We started training a small group, which included athletes in taekwondo, trampolining and artistic gymnastics, because no one told us anything, I had urine leakage when I was 24 and it became normal, but it’s not normal at all., that should be clear. Pelvic floor dysfunction due to sports or aging is not normal and needs to be assessed,” explains the woman from Vigo.
Based on her own experience, Naza Tilve trained to help other women restore their muscle tone, or at least try to improve it, and specialized in injury prevention and readaptation, as well as physical prescribing in special populations. pregnant women, elderly people or people with specific pathologies. And for this urban coach, the main thing is prevention and information. In this sense, Tilve emphasizes: “The first thing you need is awareness of the body, knowledge of how muscles are structured, how to contract and relax them. Secondly, strength. Unless you have strong glutes and thighs and an active transverse muscle, any depressive activities you do will affect the pelvic floor, and we do them every day because we already sit for eight hours in the office, retroverted and pushed towards the floor. pelvis, this is a depressive activity. Working with body awareness is prevention, because the problem is not in the activity, but in its unscrupulous execution. I did it when I was 24, now I’m 41 and I’ve never had to urinate again.”
It is a misconception that a compress is offered as a solution. What is needed is work on the pelvic floor and an interdisciplinary approach involving specialized specialists.
After working for several years in a pelvic floor physiotherapy clinic, Tilve decided to set out on her own path and now women come to her and tell her how disabling it is.”having to go to the toilet every hour and a half, not being able to be in public because they are afraid of leaking or inability to go for a quiet walk with children or the dog. And no one talks about it.” Similarly, this professional is very critical of advertising that offers a compress as a “solution” to these problems: “This is a deviation. What is needed is work on the pelvic floor and an interdisciplinary approach involving specialized specialists.”
Pregnancy is a major risk factor for a weakened pelvic floor in women, and vaginal prolapse is another serious problem. Naza Tilve points out that “prolapses are very embarrassing and those in first grade, with physical therapy and exercise guidance, can recover. In more advanced cases, although they cannot be saved by surgery, quality of life and recovery can be improved.”