If you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome and pelvic floor problems, you'll know just
how difficult flare-ups are to manage and how much a flare-up can cause your pelvic floor problems
to become much worse. Hi, I’m Michelle, and today I’m guiding you through how to manage IBS
flare-ups and also to how to stop this worsening your pelvic floor conditions, because both are so
closely interrelated. Now, we're going to be going through, first of all, how to manage bloating,
secondly, how to manage constipation, and these are emergency management strategies;
and then, finally, I’ll be talking to you about diarrhea, and how to manage diarrhea.
So the typical symptoms of IBS, as you probably know, are bloating through your stomach,
and that means increased gas and water in the bowel, and so, by the end of the day, your tummy
can be really distended. The other symptoms are abdominal cramping or pain in your tummy,
and you can have diarrhea and/or constipation, and you might have both or one or the other. Now,
this can happen every day or it might just happen some of the time,
and we know that the triggers, the main triggers are the types of foods you eat,
and also to stress. In my next video, I'm looking really closely at foods and your diet,
but today we're all about emergency management to give you immediate relief.
So let's talk about bloating first up. Now, bloating occurs when certain sugars
that go through your system aren't well digested. So basically what can happen is increased fluid
and increased gas can occur in your bowel as these undigested sugars pass through. So if you imagine
a normal situation with your bowel, and this is your pelvis here, so I’m going to sit this on top
just as an example of a normal situation, you've got your bladder and your uterus, all your
internal organs there, your pelvic organs inside. And so, you have a weight of your abdomen sitting
on that. So if we look then at the pelvic floor underneath, you've got your pelvic floor muscles,
and they are under increasing load. So if your abdomen is getting larger through the day,
so swelling up with gas and swelling up with fluid, you can see how much extra load that's
going to place onto your pelvic floor, and also too onto the organs inside. So it's going to
put pressure on your bladder, it can make your prolapse symptoms of dragging and bulging feel
much worse during the course of the day, and it can also exacerbate pelvic pain by stretching
out your pelvic floor muscles underneath. The other real problem with bloating is that by
creating gas and passing extra gas, for one, we're stretching down through our pelvic floor muscles,
so they're not going to work as well as what they should be. So basically, your IBS and your
pelvic floor are very closely interrelated. So what can you do about it? Fortunately,
there are quite a number of things you can do at home, so let's go through these each in turn.
Now, the first thing that you can reach for is a hot pack
and there's a number of ways you can apply a hot pack over your tummy, so you can see here,
you can lie down on your back with your knees bent with the hot pack over your tummy,
if that's really uncomfortable, you can also lie on your side and you can wrap a towel around your
middle to apply the warm pack against your tummy. So warmth is one way of getting immediate relief.
You can also use different positions. Now, there's an exercise video above
that helps you know different exercises to do to release gas or to relieve gas,
but positions like kneeling on all fours, kneeling on your forearms or, if you can't kneel,
standing and rotating your hips gently as you can see in the image above, are really nice ways
of helping gas to move. Also too, gentle walking can help gas to move. The worst thing you can do
is lie in one spot, because the gastric motility isn't encouraged, and the gas will just sit there.
Now, one of my biggest emergency management tips for gas is a medication called Buscopan, and this
is it here, this is one of my best friends if I have an IBS flare-up. So Buscopan helps to relieve
the spasm in the tummy. Just check with your pharmacist that you're right to take
this medication or another medication called Mintec. This one takes about 20 minutes to work,
and what it does is makes the abdominal muscles become less spasmodic, so it relieves the spasm,
and in doing so, relieves your pain. So great medication to have handy
in the case of a flare-up. There's also herbal remedies that you can get and some of the herbal
remedies include Iberogast that you can see here, and also too, peppermint oil. But if
you're going to be taking the peppermint oil, make sure you get the peppermint oil capsules
that have something called enteric coating, and that's a coating that coats the peppermint oil
so it actually goes through your tummy, the little tablet goes through your tummy,
and rather than causing you a gastric upset, it actually dissolves in the gut, so then it helps
to relieve spasm in the gut. So they are really nice medications to choose as well.
Now, if you're passing gas frequently, you're going to be doing your Kegel exercises, and it's
really vital to protect your pelvic floor by not straining to empty gas, that's really critical. So
you want to not strain, use the positions that I've talked about, and do regular pelvic floor
exercises during the course of the day so that your pelvic floor muscles aren't stretched
out by all the extra gas, and by all the extra load of the bloating during the day.
Now, the final thing that I’d like to mention in terms of bloating is diet,
this is really critical, and I’ll be going through this at length in my next video. So
you might want to subscribe here to make sure you catch that video on bloating and foods.
And finally too, relaxation, because we know that stress is a big trigger for IBS,
so that if you can relax, that can help your system cope with bloating too.
So now, let's move on to constipation and also to diarrhea and emergency management for this.
Now, when certain foods and certain sugars aren't well absorbed in your bowel, what happens is the
bowel can either speed up or it can slow down, so when it speeds up, obviously you end up with
diarrhea, or when it slows down, you can become constipated and even more bloated. So we need
some emergency management strategies for both constipation and for diarrhea. The first emergency
management strategy for your constipation is moving. If you stay still, the bowel won't move,
so movement is really important for constipation. Second thing is avoid increasing your fiber. If
you reach for fiber, when the bowel is already loaded, then what you'll find is that you'll
become more blocked up. Now, if you have a look at these two images here, you can see I’ve got
a bowel that's loaded, you can see how heavy that looks, in comparison to unconstipated.
So when you're constipated, you put get a back flow of fecal content in the bowel,
and that loads up the pelvic floor, so that makes your pelvic floor symptoms worse,
and it makes you much more inclined to strain. So it's really key that, you don't strain to
empty your bowel when you're constipated with IBS or when you're constipated with diarrhea.
So I've gone through a number of times in my past videos on how to empty the bowel without
straining, and you can refer to the video here on how to empty your bowel without straining, and
that's using the brace and bulge technique. Now, to be able to do that, you need a soft well-formed
stool; if your stool is really hard, the brace and bulge technique won't work, what you'll need to
do is to empty, and you might even speak to your pharmacist about using a suppository. It needs to
slide up, obviously using a gloved finger, against the back wall of the rectum in between the rectum
and the stool to actually work, and that way you can actually empty that hard stool fast.
Now, my second recommendation for emergency management is to actually use an osmotic laxative.
Now, osmotic laxatives like MiraLax or Osmolax are really gentle on the bowel. What they actually do
is they draw fluid, they're a stimulant laxative, and they also too soften the stool, and they work
by drawing extra fluid into the bowel so the bowel movement passes through, and it passes through
gently. It comes in sachets, and basically you add the sachet of the substance, of the MiraLax or the
sachet of the Osmolax to water. So you need to increase by a glass or two of water each time you
take that substance to actually encourage that to move through, and you can take those on a regular
basis without becoming reliant on those products, so these are great products to know about.
Now, finally in terms of your management, your IBS management for your bowel, don't increase your
consumption of fatty foods, because fatty foods can also too slow down the transit of your food
through your bowel. So you want to be thinking about not increasing your fiber too much if you
are constipated, and then gradually reintroducing your fiber when you've cleared your bowel,
and I’ll be talking to you more about that in the next video on our foods and our dietary management
of IBS. But the other thing is to watch your fatty food intake, because that will slow everything
down. And finally, of course, after your bowel movement, do your Kegel exercises. So when you
use your bowels, then contract through your pelvic floor, and you can refer to my Kegel
exercises for men and for women above, and they're also linked in the description below.
Now, finally with diarrhea, it can be that alternating pattern kind of constipation
and diarrhea. So in terms of diarrhea, there's a number of things you can do. The first thing is
take Imodium, so speak with your pharmacist or your doctor about medication that will actually
slow down your gastric transit. The second thing is, if you're using your bowels frequently,
make sure you use your Kegel exercises, do your Kegel exercises after you've used your bowel,
because again, your pelvic floor will be stretched out, and it won't work as effectively. And
finally, there's certain foods that will help you slow down your gastric motility, and these
foods include things like your white bread, your white rice, and also too, white mashed potato.
So I think you can see there's a lot that you can do for emergency management of your IBS symptoms,
and your flare-ups to protect your pelvic floor. So we've gone through bloating,
we've talked about diarrhea and constipation; and in my next video, we're going to be talking
and looking really closely at foods to choose and the foods to avoid to protect your pelvic floor
and manage your IBS symptoms. So I really hope this information helps you get some
relief from your IBS symptoms, and also too helps you to manage your pelvic floor better.
If this video has helped you, please give it a like below, because then YouTube will
share it with other viewers as well. Thank you so much for watching today,
I look forward to bringing you the information on FODMAP friendly foods next time. Bye for now.