Working in today’s world is rushed, fast…you don’t want to miss a beat. Don’t want to miss a meeting. Don’t want to miss any information…but when your body and physical health issues slow you down, your work (and even your social life) can become compromised.
At our upcoming May 2018 BCPWN First Friday Luncheon, we’ll be joined by Jennifer Collard, a local Physical Therapist, who specializes Women’s Pelvic and Abdominal 
Health at Total Health Associates in Waldwick, NJ. Jen will speak openly and honestly about core and pelvic floor health issues, and the effects they have on the lives of women.
She’ll explore easy ways to work your core and pelvic floor during your work day and commute, to help improve confidence, productivity, overall health and decrease stress. And also share how a variety of daily postures and activities leads to a healthy core.
Here are Jen’s 4 Tips for setting yourself up for core and pelvic floor success:
1. Learn How to Properly do a Kegel: Alignment of your body can influence success. Remember to fully relax the pelvic floor after activating it. Muscles need to strengthen and lengthen…even the pelvic floor,which is comprised of a series of muscles. Lots of different cues can help a person learn to perform this muscle activation and relaxation properly. Try thinking to yourself: “squeeze and lift your bottom as if you are sitting on a cold seat”, “exhale and squeeze and lift.”
2. Eliminate These Items from your Diet: Coffee, artificial sweeteners and carbonated drinks are among the items that can irritate the bladder and cause increased frequency to the restroom. Avoid or limit these right before an important meeting that you need to be present for the entire time or during a long commute. While on the flip side - dehydrating yourself (voluntarily drinking less or no water) is NOT the solution, either. Deydration irritates the lining of the bladder. The solution? Simple: 8 glasses of flat water each day.
3. Be Posture Perfect: Variability in posture, position and activity level throughout the day is important for core, pelvic floor, respiratory, circulatory and especially stress management. Set these systems up for success by moving and changing position every 20 minutes or so, align your ribcage over your pelvis to normalize pressure and activate core with proper pressure, avoid contracting or gripping your buttocks or abdominals throughout the day as this put overbearing pressure onto the pelvic floor organs, respiration and circulation. Take a deep, slow cleansing breath each hour or even more often if possible.
4. STOP “JIC’ing” (Just In Case) toileting: JIC’ing trains your bladder to “go” too frequently. Normal urination frequency during the day is between 4-6x’s/day. To defer/inhibit urge to use the restroom: Breathe slow, stay calm, distract your mind to decrease the signal to bladder, do a few Kegels (the right way). Slowly and calmly proceed to restroom if urge can not be delayed.
