No Products in the Cart
We’ve all got stress.
Unfortunately, it’s just a part of modern life that we can’t seem to escape.
If there were an unsubscribe button for stress, we’d all immediately tap it… Unfortunately, life just doesn’t work that way, does it?
The worst thing about stress is that not only is it inescapable, it directly affects your body on a physiological level.
And your pelvic floor and bladder are no exception.
In this article, I’m going to walk you through:
• How stress directly affects the pelvic floor and bladder.
• The symptoms and signs that point to a pelvic floor and bladder under stress.
• Why everything you’ve been taught about stress management is wrong
• How to actually manage stress — and improve the health of your pelvic floor and bladder at the same time.
The pelvic floor is a network of muscles that supports all of your organs. This includes your bladder, intestines, and uterus. These muscles are crucial for the health of your entire body.
And they play an outsized role in controlling your bladder.
The bladder works very closely with the pelvic floor. When the pelvic floor relaxes, urine is allowed to leave the bladder. When the pelvic floor muscles contract, the flow of urine stops. This is an automatic process influenced by brain signals.
Stress can disrupt the typically seamless communication between your brain, your pelvic floor, and your bladder. And it can cause your pelvic floor muscles to become too tight or too weak.
You see, stress triggers a cascade of physiological responses in your body.
When you encounter a stressor, your body’s fight-or-flight response kicks in, releasing a flood of stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones prepare your body to respond to danger, but they also have wide-reaching effects on your physical health when the stress is prolonged, as many of us experience every single day.
This impact on the nervous system, in turn, can disrupt the normal functioning of the pelvic floor and bladder.
What’s really crazy is this is the kind of stress we’re taught to live with. The kind we’re expected to dismiss. The kind that lives just behind the scenes and lets you continue to function.
The problem is, while you push it down, your pelvic floor absorbs it all.
Let’s take a look at how that manifests in your body.
Here are some key signs you need to start managing your stress (because it’s affecting your pelvic floor and bladder).
1- Urinary Urgency and Frequency: Feeling a sudden, compelling need to pee more frequently than you’d like can indicate stress’s impact on your bladder and pelvic floor muscles.
2- Difficulty Urinating or Emptying the Bladder Fully: Stress and tension in the pelvic floor muscles can make it difficult to start going to the bathroom or to fully empty your bladder.
3- Incontinence: Stress can lead to both urge incontinence (sudden urinary leakage accompanied by an urgent need to urinate) and stress incontinence (leakage when pressure is exerted on the bladder, like during coughing or sneezing).
4- Pain or Discomfort in the Pelvic Region: Chronic stress and tension can cause pain, discomfort, or a heavy feeling in the pelvic area.
5- Constipation or Bowel Strain: Just as with the urinary system, stress can affect bowel movements, leading to constipation or difficulty during bowel movements.
Here’s the thing.
In our society, we’re taught to accept stress as a part of life.
In fact, we’re even encouraged to embrace stress. Ultimately, we’re expected to purposefully stress our bodies out in the name of things like productivity.
And then, we’re taught that to escape from these societal-induced stressors, the proper thing to do is self-medicate with substances like weed and wine.
The problem is that these substances don’t actually fix the problem.
Alcohol and drugs don’t modify your nervous system in the way you want them to. They leave you still feeling anxious, they hurt your pelvic floor muscles further, and they’re not great for your brain health, either. And let’s not even talk about the dehydration, migraines, and potential for dependency these types of coping mechanisms create.
Instead of resorting to crude and ineffective measures for temporarily easing stress, the best thing to do is understand how to harness the calming power of your parasympathetic nervous system.
This can be a game-changer in your journey to reclaiming your health and your:
• JoyHappiness
• Peace of mind
• Motivation
• Restful sleep
• Bladder control
• Pelvic power
• Lifting brain fog
My Queen, I have to be honest with you.
To heal your pelvic floor and bladder, you’ve got to balance your nervous system first. If you don’t — that stress-induced cortisol will constantly be working against everything you’re trying to do to heal your body.
And if you’ve been trying to work on your pelvic floor but not seeing results — this is probably why.
So, how exactly do you soothe your nervous system and begin the path to healing?
Do you have to retreat to the Himalayas with Wim Hof for a few years or join a monastery for a few years?
Nope.
I’ve got something much simpler.
My new magical stress-hormone-dropping formula, Total Fem Calm and ClarityTM is here to save the day.
It’s a combination of the world’s most powerful natural stress relievers. The ones that actually work to activate your parasympathetic nervous system and finally, allow your body and mind to heal.
It includes:
• Magnesium Glycinate — Magnesium is the most important mineral in your body, and one that can seriously calm your nervous system. In fact, research indicates magnesium could inhibit stress and reduce feelings of worry. (1,2) And one study even showed it was effective in the fight against depression within two weeks. (3) Basically, magnesium is the secret weapon you need to quickly take control of your nervous system and your mood without the yucky side effects wine and weed can induce.
• California Poppy — California poppy helps you get better sleep, a crucial part of any healing protocol. (4) It also helps calm your nervous system by interacting with Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptors in your brain. (5) GABA is a neurotransmitter that exerts a calming influence on your nervous system.
Benzodiazepines like Xanax work by helping GABA bind to its receptors. (6) But it’s much safer and won’t create a risk for dependency or cognitive issues the way benzos do! (7)
• Motherwort — Motherwort is a fantastic natural chill pill, widely regarded as a natural sedative with a special affinity for women. (8) Motherwort also appears to influence those calming GABA receptors in the brain in a similar fashion as California poppy. (9) These two work together to really put the ‘calm’ into Calm and Clarity.
• Lemon Balm — Lemon Balm is positively packed with antioxidants and polyphenolic compounds. (10,11) Studies generally suggest lemon balm is good at supporting mood and encouraging a relaxed state of mind. In fact, one double-blind, placebo-controlled study showed lemon balm extract helped improve mood and/or cognitive performance. (12) and another double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized study showed study participants felt significantly calmer after taking just two doses of lemon balm extract. (13)
As you can see, the Calm and ClarityTM formula was carefully crafted with the best mother nature has to offer when it comes to relaxation.
Drop that behind-the-scenes stress.
And start healing your body the right way.
Isa Herrera, MSPT, CSCS is a New York City-based holistic women's pelvic floor specialist, author of 5 books on pelvic health, including the international best seller Female Pelvic Alchemy, and the ground-breaking self-help book, Ending Female Pain, A Woman's Manual. She has dedicated her career to advancing awareness of pelvic floor conditions so that more people can find relief from this silent epidemic that affects over 30 million people in the US alone. Ms. Herrera holds a BA in Psychology and Biology from Fordham University and also a Masters in Physical Therapy from Hunter College.
