IBD & Pelvic Rehab - What's Our Role? Episode 55 with Michelle Lyons

Welcome to this week's episode, where we're starting to look at preparing for the upcoming festive season - full of stress, different eating, sleeping and travel planning - the perfect recipe for stress, unregulated nervous systems, digestive systems and pelvic floor dysfunction! All this month, we're going to look at the evidence for multimodal pelvic rehab & lifestyle strategies for pain & digestive distress.

Let's start the conversation with Inflammatory Bowel Disease - including Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis - how does it impact female pelvic health, from sexual health, contraception choices, fertility, pregnancy & postpartum recovery?

There's a significant (and growing!) body of evidence to support the role of a biopsychosocial pelvic rehab approach to helping women with IBD live well

Did you know:

• that 61.4% of women with IBD have some degree of sexual dysfunction?
• that there's an increased risk of gestational diabetes?
• that one of the best way to improve the fatigue associated with IBD is exercise?
• that the research looking at pelvic floor dysfunction, whether we're talking about pelvic pain, bowel frequency/urgency, sexual pain - all points to the efficacy of a multimodal pelvic rehab approach

The problem might be that gastroenterologists don't know you can help! All the research, especially around sexual health and pelvic floor dysfunction emphasises the need for a multimodal pelvic rehab approach as part of an inter-disciplinary approach to improving quality of life for women with IBD

Want to take an even deeper dive into Bowel Health during the perinatal year? I've added a bonus module to my online course, Bowel Health & Women's Health, looking at bowel function in the perinatal year, from the influence of IBS and IBD, but also fissures, haemorrhoids, OASI, anal continence and more...

Stay tuned as we look at other strategies for pain and stress management and digestive health throughout the leadup to the festive season (seriously, how can it be November already?!)

Thanks for being here and if you can, I'd love it if you can rate, review and subscribe to the podcast - and be sure you're following me on Instagram @michellelyons_muliebrity for all the latest in women's health

See you next time! Mx (and don't forget to celebrate muliebrity!)