Lower Back and Pelvic Pain and Pelvic Floor Dysfunction – What’s The Connection?
These two people might have more in common than they think.
If you have chronic pain in your lower back, hips, or pelvis, your pelvic floor might be trying to get your attention. A 2018 study¹ by renowned Canadian Pelvic Health Physiotherapists Sinead Dufour, Brittany and Carolyn Vandyken, and MJ Forget examined the pelvic floor characteristics of women seeking Physiotherapy for lumbopelvic pain (lower back and/or pelvic girdle pain). 95% of the women in the study who had lumbopelvic pain also had signs of pelvic floor dysfunction (as evidenced by tenderness, weakness of the pelvic floor, and pelvic organ prolapse). Of the participants, 71% of the participants had tenderness when their pelvic floor muscles were examined. What this means is that the participant had excessive activity of these muscles, or an “overactive” pelvic floor. 66% of the participants had weakness in their pelvic floor muscles, and 41% had a prolapse.
