Monthly Archives: March 2016

  1. Busting the Myths: The Bladder

    Bladder Urgency, weak bladder

    Firstly a Few Facts

    There are two types of muscles in your body :

    Skeletal muscle – we have control of these and can make them contract and relax as we wish. These are the moving muscles like the biceps and hamstrings.
    Smooth muscle – we don’t have control of these muscles , they contract by themselves, automatically and are controlled by our brain. They are the 'function' muscles that keep the body working e.g the heart and the gut. They work by stretch response. For example, as blood fills the heart chambers (input) the walls stretch and at a certain point of stretch automatically contract to push the blood out (cardiac output). The same with the gut – as the food bolus passes through, it stretches and squeezes and pushes it along a bit like an inchworm!

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  2. When is it safe to return to high impact exercise after having a baby?

    When is it safe to return to high impact exercise after having a baby?

    This article first appeared on Go Mum! Fitness as a guest blog I was asked to do.

    As women’s health physios, we are often asked “when can I return to high impact exercise? “ Expectations of the media, celebrities and social media would suggest that new mums can do no right – everyone is telling you how you should do every thing from birthing your baby  to  what you should look like afterwards!  

    Many women feel they have to do high impact workouts in order to build up a sweat, get fit, burn fat and lose baby weight. However, high impact exercise is a common cause of Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI), or wetting yourself when you exercise/cough/sneeze, particularly in post natal women.

    Interestingly, one of the main independent risk factors for SUI after having a baby is BMI, or body mass index – the amount of fat your body carries. Postnatal depression is also common, and SUI can be one of the triggers. So it totally makes sense that we exercise after having a baby; but does that leave us between a rock and a hard place?

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