Pelvic pain syndromes tend to happen to the brightest and most accomplished of peoples in society. The overachievers who carry all kinds of responsibilities. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, investment bankers, programmers, and CEO’s are commonly afflicted with this problem. The biggest suffering in pelvic pain syndromes that we treat is not the physical part of it, certainly it’s uncomfortable and no one will want it, but if you knew that your physical symptoms would be better tomorrow, it wouldn’t really bother you so much. You’d tolerate the discomfort and you would feel ok with the knowledge that the symptoms would go away. Just like having cold or cutting yourself, you would have a certain kind of faith that you’d get better.
What happens with pelvic pain syndromes is that when it doesn’t go away, the thought of this pain persisting and the worry about life with pain, is really the biggest suffering. And, the Stanford protocol really addresses both the physical and psychological components of pelvic pain syndromes. Both are absolutely essential to deal with. If you only deal with the physical symptoms, the psychological context in which they occur will cause the body to tighten up, generally speaking, and you might have some temporary relief just by working on the physical symptoms, but the whole attitude that created them is not addressed. It must be addressed, and that’s why we teach people a method of regularly, daily relaxing the pelvic floor, quieting down anxiety and the tendency to tighten up under stress.
We teach people how they themselves can release their own trigger points, and their own areas of physical restriction. When you know that there is something you can do to help yourself, even when a stressful situation arises, it is boundless. It’s typical for someone who comes to see us who has had some kind of significant and ongoing stress in their life for a certain period of time, which seem to be coincident with the beginning of their symptoms. But, even when this stress stops, the symptoms continued. In fact this tension-anxiety-pain cycle tends to have a life of its own, tends to go on and on even when the original trigger goes away.
People often ask if there is a cure or any hope for me, and people who ask this are usually people who have been depressed and hopeless for a long time. We have helped people significantly reduce their pain and their symptoms and we’ve helped some people become pain free. I don’t like to use the word cure, because under periods of stress this problem can reoccur. Now our protocol is aimed at giving the patients the tools to reduce or stop the flair up when this does occur. And, when there is something you know you can do about the problem, this problem becomes much easier to deal with.
We have inquiries from women about whether the Stanford protocol will help female pelvic pain. In fact from our point of view, muscle related pelvic pain in men and women is essentially the same and the treatment is the same. Our protocol focuses on muscle related pain on men and women.
The Stanford protocol is what we have called the slow fix, not the quick fix. When people come to see us we tell them that they are going to have to do the physical therapy self-treatment and the relaxation protocol, at least an hour and a half a day for many many months. Then in a maintenance way on an ongoing basis. If someone is not prepared to do that, they probably aren’t a good candidate for our protocol.
Just like you would not hire somebody to brush your teeth to keep your teeth cleaned, the same is said about taking care of the pelvic muscles that have tended to be chronically contracted. That is something that you as the patient have to do yourself.
Learn more about Dr. Davide Wise and “A Headache in the Pelvis” here: http://www.amazon.com/David-Wise/e/B001JS56E2/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1
I’ve been associated with the department of urology at Stanford for thirty four years now, and actually got interested in problems of infections, especially the genital /urinary areas, many years ago. Dr. Thomas Stamey, a well know pioneer in urology, was one of the first to really solve the issue of where infection resides in the prostate, he dealt a lot with female urinary tract infections, and I had the privilege to learn at his side during those early years. It then became apparent, to me and others, that there was a lot more complexity to this issue of pelvic dysfunctions, urinary disorders, and especially those conditions where we started to see pain. A lot of people were suffering from this, and a lot of urologist /gynecologist’s family practice physicians didn’t really have a handle on it, nor knew what to do with it, particularly when people didn’t respond to antibiotics…
It became obvious that searching for an infectious cause was not the answer, and over many years and many urologists and investigators we’ve discovered that, in prostate pain for example, only about 5% of all those who have discomfort and dysfunction of urination from the prostate have any kind of infectious process. It began to be evident that there was something going on in the balance of the muscles, and that was responsible for creating some pain disorders…
It’s amazing to note that we have twenty seven different muscles in and around the pelvis, some of them intimately associated with the glands and are very responsible for coordinating their function. The act of simply emptying the bladder requires good relaxation of the pelvis, requires a cognitive decision to allow the bladder to contract, and requires that the prostate and the bladder neck relax at the same time…
Patient, diagnosis, & Procedure.
Symptoms.
“The Stanford Protocol”.
Stress and anxiety is just pouring gasoline on the fire that feeds these muscles which are already sore and tender. We put this together in this book, A Headache in the Pelvis, we’re coming out with the fifth edition and every time we rewrite this we find new concepts and we can report on some of the research that we’ve done with the patients that we’ve seen over the years…
Early breakthrough research.
More information about the book A Headache in the Pelvis can be found here: – http://www.pelvicpainhelp.com .
Pilates Teachers: Download this resource: Trauma Informed Tips for Pilates Teachers: https://trifectapilates.com/tips 
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