ovarian cancer

Good stuff.

I ran across a case study a few days ago describing a rectal mass that had been mistaken for rectocele. This is why a professional diagnosis is always in order.

Have to add tho...even in this age of serious pollution and environmental degradation we have an enormous level of control over our health. Good food, water, sunshine, exercise, sleep, play, love...

You're right to sound this warning note not to ignore abdominal swelling Alemama.

However, I have been experiencing it for most of the time I have been following a 'whole woman' lifestyle, and it has been getting me down and making me feel fat.

I think I have recently pinpointed the causes:

Going overboard on the anti inflammatory fruit and veg - funny how I always feel much slimmer in the morning!

The posture itself, combined with this, can make it look as though your stomach is protruding. I think I have perhaps been exagerrating the lumbar curve and, although I pull right up and feel comfortable, it certainly makes my abdomen look bigger. This can be depressing because, just when I got over feeling unwomanly because of POP, I started to feel, well, fat, and to get sick of the leggings and floaty top uniform.

So, I have been trying the following, with some initial success. It might not be for everyone and I might be superficial for wanting to look more like I used to, but here goes.

I am trying to reduce my lumbar curve a bit and monitor the effect on my POP symptoms. Looking at the lovely Nickelle on the video, I'd say I'm being quite a bit curvier and more extreme ( but then I'm quite a bit older and more 'lived in' )!

I'm halving my quantities of fruit and veg: still eating them frequently, just in very small amounts. In fact I'm reducing my portions of just about everything after I realised that, with all this anti-inflammatory feeding myself good things and lots of protein, I'm acutally eating quite a bit more than I did when I lived on fresh air, coffee, wine and cake. So, it's no wonder that I've gained seven pounds over the winter, despite initially losing weight with Whole Woman. I'm also cheating a bit more, in small doses, with treats like a glass of wine a week, to stop myself feeling too deprived.

I think it's a case of how extreme we are comfortable with being, and when being a real purist whole woman gets you down. I'll never go back to my old zip and tuck posture or joke of a diet, but I'm enjoying looking less like I'm in the early stages of pregnancy, and hoping that if I stick to this adapted whole woman approach, I will be able to enjoy my figure and clothes a bit more again. It's all about quality of life and that means different things to different women.

Having said that, if reducing the lumbar curve/ roughage a bit makes my symptoms worse, I'll be back being an extreme whole woman before you can say urogynaecologist. I'll keep you posted.

Yours superficially and hoping not to be a bad influence.

Doubtful
P.S. Hope I'm not being tactless Alemama. Pregnant curves look just gorgeous, when you're pregnant. Thinking of you all the very best for the birth.

Doubtful, I am wondering how strong your obliques and your transverse abdominus muscles are? In WW posture your rectus abdominus muscles are suspended between the bottom of your ribcage and your pelvis under your pubic region. The TA goes sideways, starting at one side of the wide ligament/fascia under the RA called the linea alba, and going around the side and joining onto the same side of the lumbar spine. Your external obliques also originate in the linea alba and rise up diagonally and join in between the ribs. These are the muscles that form the sides of a sling under the pregnant belly. The internal obliques also originate at the front in the linea alba and trace mostly downwards in a diagonal direction at right angles to the external obliques. At the back they join on both sides to a sheet of fascia that covers the spine. These are the muscles that form a sling over the top of, and around the pregnant belly. All the obliques and the TA are responsible for our having a waist.

Any exercise that can be done in WW posture that flexes the body to the front or sides or lifts the legs to the front or sides will strengthen these muscles. Breathing deeply with your diaphragm gives them all a good stretch. The cobra position in yoga gives the RA a wonderful stretch. Stretching them out is as important as contracting them right up.

If your abdominal muscles are stretched all the time, eg if they are stretched over a lot of extra fat from obesity, they don't get much chance to contract, so they would lose tone. They really need to move, in order to become stronger. That's all I know. If you are worried about the muscular tone of your abdominal group a physio can help you with a program to get them moving.

I hope this makes some sense.

Louise

Louise

I know what you mean about feeling fatter. Since starting the WW posture, there has been a distinct change in the shape of my belly. The whole area is now quite rounded, and even though it feels protruding to me, funnily enough it doesn't seem so to others. Also, all of my clothes still fit the same (I tended toward low-rise pants before and they just fit right underneath) and I weigh the same, so even though I feel 'fatter' I think that is more of my Western-culture induced notion of what 'fatter' and 'slimmer' look like. Which was responsible for all my years of butt-tucking in the first place.

In some ways though I have found this new shape to be quite aesthetically pleasing at it reminds me of a younger body. So I am going with that!

Ha! Me too, Hockeymom. I sometimes get wistful wishing I would've figured this out when I was 25. I would've loved to have seen my younger body in WW posture. We only have what we have, and the key to life is the grace of gratitude and acceptance.

Thank you for pointing this out, alemama. I cringe inside everytime women attribute symptoms to POP that really should have nothing to do with POP. We should all remember that persistent *anything* is a warning. Bloating relived by a good BM or less broccoli or more fluids is very different from bloating that stays no matter what you do . . . .

Hi Louise

Thanks for the good tips on exercise - although I think I'm doing all that anyway as I do Christine's ballet workout most days. Also, despite a recent winter 'expansion' - I'm still in the bottom half of the normal weight range for my height, so it's not obesity - even though I feel more comfortable seven pounds or so lighter - it's my 'natural' weight that I always seemed to be before I overdid it on the wholefood this winter to compensate for giving up so many vices. I've got a very defined waist from the front - and my abdomen was feeling much firmer than when I used to tuck it in- just - well, very rounded, like being four months pregnant.

So, I don't think it was poor muscle tone, I think it was overdoing the lumbar curve. In a week of experimenting with slightly less curve, but still a relaxed belly and pulling up as usual, it loooks pleasingly rounded but much, much smaller, i.e. I'm looking less like a seahorse ( not sure if that image quite works). Oh, the joy of putting on some loose linen trousers and a fitted top after a winter spent largely in leggings and smocks.

I think the anziety to do everything right was making me really overdo the curve. It's difficult to fine tune the posture by looking at photos as we're all different shapes and sizes. It's not like there's a class and an expert teacher helping us to align ourselves. In one way it's a shame we're all anonymous or we could swap photos! I suppose, in theory, overdoing it could have its dangers, just as zipping and tucking does - but I'm no expert on physiology.

If all this seems trivial, I agree with everyone else who's posted - please ladies, no one ignore ongoing pain or changes in their body that they can't explain.

Doubtful

Have a look at Nikelle. Pretty similar I would guess.

Hi Doubtful

I had a lightbulb moment under the shower this morning. If you are having bloating and feel there is a lot of bulk in your system it can mean only two things if it is digestion related. Either you are having too much bulk in your diet, ie non-soluble fibre that will not dissolve during digestion, and just makes its way through, or the microflora or your own physiology in your intestinal system is not digesting properly.

A simple step would be to take at least a month long course of very good quality probiotic. Look for the refrigerated variety, eg Yakult, or Inner Health Plus, enteric coating to stop your stomach acid destroying it on the way through, or a good quality, tried and tested non-refrigerated one liked Bilac, which I don't think is available any more, but there will be others.

Having the right sort of bacteria is sort of like stocking the pantry so you will have the right stuff to deal with visitors. ;-)

It doesn't matter who comes in the door, if you don't have the right things in the pantry it won't end well.

Once you have that right your difficulties might resolve, or at least that bit is resolved and taken out of the equation.

Louise

Thanks Louise

I might try this next. However, I'm feeling much better on the reduced veggie routine and moderating my posture- it's all about keeping a balance I suppose. My pop is fine/ good with this so far so I'll see. I've always thought I was dairy intolerant - makes me bloated and constipated - but recently I've been putting a very little bit of butter and cheese back into my diet with no ill effects- so it's not so much what I'm eating as what state my friendly bacteria are in. Maybe a probiotic is in order. I eat 'live' soya yoghurt but I've heard there are not enough cultures in them to make much difference.

All your advice is so carefully thought out - thank you!

Doubtfrul

Another thought. For a woman who has held her tummy in for maybe decades, the sight of a round belly can be quite confronting. It may be that you are 'seeing' with your brain, not with your eyes. This is the old "Do I look fat in this dress?" dilemma. It can take a while to overcome this thinking. Ask yourself "Why should my tummy be flat?" with a sense of philosophical and scientific enquiry.

"What works better in my body if my tummy is flat?" Can you answer this last question?

So what if your have a round belly? Maybe a long time ago somebody told you that your belly should not be round; that it should be flat! Getting to know my own muscle and bone structure has allowed me to realise that flat is something that happens for some women sometimes in some postures, and mostly before babies. And flat has hidden implications for what is happening on the inside of the lower abdomen, and pelvic organ positioning. Flat is not good for me, and I don't think it is good for women! We are not designed for Flat.

L

Thanks for the reminder Alemama, not that it is anything I really want to think about for too long, but you've got to keep it in the back of your mind.

Dear Doubtful
Re: seven pound weight gain
I too would blame the fruit if you have been hitting it hard, like more than 1-2 servings per day or downing bottles of fruit juice and/or eating food sweetened with fructose syrup. It appears that fructose puts weight around our middle for it by-passes our natural appetite control the hypothalamus and so our appetite hormones; insulin, leptin and CCK are not activated. The problem with fructose is any excess turns to fatty acids and then straight to body fat. (See "Sweet Poison" by David Gillespie or your basic biochemistry textbook.)
I verified this myself when on a low fat, low carb diet I rewarded myself with a nightly dessert of low fat ice cream and fruit. The absence of fat in the ice cream was made up for with sugar so that it still tasted appealing. After a few weeks of that dessert I gained a lot of weight.

If you haven't been hitting the fructose (sugar is 50% fructose) then you need to look at something else.

On the other hand, if you are still in the lower weight range for your height, then the weight gain may not be a bad thing. When I was young and slim, we called it a proud stomach.

Re: flatulence and bloating
Like you I suffered this. I too found relief in cutting fruit, veg, but also grains. The probiotic suggestion makes sense. I recently read that Gentian helps break down food to help absorption. It's a herb that stimulates our bitter taste receptors and results in secretion of digestive juices. It's a key ingredient in Swedish bitters. I have not tried it for the cut in carbs and fiber did the trick.

Re: Inflammatory diet
It is my understanding that the emphasis needs to be on fatty acids particularly the Omega 3s. In this light your intuitive bit of butter and cheese makes sense.

PS Glad you ditched the leggings and floaty top. The glass of wine a week, even a day, is ok. It's not counted as fructose.

Best wishes