5 Surprising Symptoms of Hypertonic Pelvic Floor 

You’ve doubtlessly heard about “pelvic floor problems” as being a matter of weak pelvic floor muscles.

And while that’s certainly most common, the opposite (after a fashion) can also be a problem:

Too much of a good thing

The pelvic floor is normally a bowl-shaped group of muscles that contract upwards when activated and relax downwards at rest. In the “hypertonic” state, they are already contracted at rest, more like a flat plate than a bowl, similar to shoulders that sit shrugged up without the person realizing.

The five symptoms, or rather the categories of symptoms, are:

• bladder problems: urgency and overactive bladder, painful bladder syndrome, pain while filling or emptying, interstitial cystitis, and urinary retention where muscles can’t relax enough to fully empty the bladder.
• bowel problems: rectal obstruction (feeling that nothing can come out), constipation, non-relaxing puborectalis muscle, and/or recurrent fissures or hemorrhoids, due to the poor muscle relaxation and resultantly reduced blood flow for healing.
• sexual problems: painful intercourse (dyspareunia), vaginismus (muscles so tight that penetration isn’t possible), pain with tampon or similar insertion, and/or vulvodynia or vestibulodynia, characterized by pain localized to vulvar or vestibular area, rather than the vagina itself.
• neurological problems: constant tension can compress the pudendal, iliohypogastric, and genitofemoral nerves (amongst others), leading to neuralgia and nerve pain in their distribution areas (i.e. where the nerves run to and from these parts).
• orthopedic problems: pelvic floor muscles connect to the pelvis and core, so hypertonicity can contribute to unresolved low back pain, tailbone pain, sacroiliac joint pain, hip pain, or pubic symphysis dysfunction.

What to do about these things? Pelvic relaxation exercises can help. Massage is usually beneficial (yes, there, and yes, that kind can also help), and assessment and treatment with a pelvic physical therapist can restore a more relaxed resting state and thus reduce the symptoms.

For more on all of this, enjoy:

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Take care!