While reviewing the connection between pregnancy and low back pain in my patients, I ran across some recent papers that I thought would be of interest.
My main concern with pregnancy, vaginal delivery or cesarean section is that the abdominals and pelvic floor muscles are stretched and possibly injured to the point where they can’t optimally stabilize the core. Also the body develops compensations and learns new stabilization strategies that don't involve the abdominals. Instead, we use the psoas erector spinae and quadratus lumborum muscles which can cause chronic back pain and predispose to injury.
It is important after pregnancy to get your muscles retrained to control your movement without compensations that will lead to pain.
We use corrective exercises in our clinic and often refer out to specialist PTs for pelvic floor aspects since not all problems are due to underactivity of the pelvic floor muscles but may be due to inappropriate coordination or differences between deep and superficial muscle activity.
I ran accross some papers on gut biome and autoimmune aspects that are not yet being addressed well by many in the medical community. I will post these soon!
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
My main concern with pregnancy, vaginal delivery or cesarean section is that the abdominals and pelvic floor muscles are stretched and possibly injured to the point where they can’t optimally stabilize the core. Also the body develops compensations and learns new stabilization strategies that don't involve the abdominals. Instead, we use the psoas erector spinae and quadratus lumborum muscles which can cause chronic back pain and predispose to injury.
It is important after pregnancy to get your muscles retrained to control your movement without compensations that will lead to pain.
We use corrective exercises in our clinic and often refer out to specialist PTs for pelvic floor aspects since not all problems are due to underactivity of the pelvic floor muscles but may be due to inappropriate coordination or differences between deep and superficial muscle activity.
I ran accross some papers on gut biome and autoimmune aspects that are not yet being addressed well by many in the medical community. I will post these soon!
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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