prolapse

well- when I first came here (more than three years ago) what I really searched for in reading posts from the past was posters who had been doing this wholewoman posture thing for a while. I wanted to know it was going to work. Then I decided- hey, it isn't going to hurt me to try it and here I am years later saying it does work.
There are not many women who have had hysterectomy posting here right now and certainly not any women to report long term results.
I hope you are able to develop a great understanding of the posture and post updates in how it is working for you years from now to encourage other wholewomen who have had a hysterectomy.

s.a.nash. Hi I am 63 and have had a rectocele for over 10 years, I have terrible constipation and the only relief is All-Bran, psylium seed, tons of fruit until I am sick of it, for the past two months I have used vaginal Provera and I believe it helps a lot along with stomach strengthening excercises. The one problem I cannot get rid of is extreme gas, it usually occurs within 20 minutes of eating, sometimes it is extremely painful. I have been taking Phillips colon health for the gas, sometimes I think it helps other times I am not so sure. Any one have any remedies for the gas.

Hi Chester

It is hard to say. Sometimes passing of gas seems to be just a sign that the body has taken some more food in and needs to make some more room. However, that only happens when the person is very constipated. If you are eating a lot of gas producing foods, like some beans, that is another cause.

Whatever the cause, it sounds like your body is not digesting well. If you are having a lot of fibre you will need to drink lots more water because fibre absorbs a lot of water. That's how it softens stool. If you don't drink enough you can become constipated.

I would also suggest that you take a month course of probiotic to try and get your gut microflora balanced again. The wrong sort of bacteria in the gut can also upset your digestive processes.

Enemas are also useful occasionally if you have become really bound up. They shouldn't be used regularly, but if your whole system is plugged up, an enema might help you to get back to square one so you don't have the backlog to deal with as well.

Good luck.

Louise

Hi Chester, I totally agree with what Louise says and just want to add that psyllium is known to cause gas/bloating in some people - it's why I stopped using it. I recently switched to larch fibre (arabinogalactans) because I do the blood type diet and it's a recommended supplement. Another thing that helps is food combining ( I do a modified version because I get too hungry to do it strictly). Judith

Hi,

Could dairy products be a culprit? I have found that when I limit my dairy, I do have less gas.

~karrymae

Hi Judith, thanks for your input, I have not heard of larch fibre, where do you buy it?

Hi Louise, thanks for your input. Actually I drink minimum of 6x8oz glasses of water, I never use sugar, occasionally I have inserted liquid glycerin to help expel, right now I am on Phillips colon health, I do believe it is working. Thanks again. Chester.

Hi Karrymae, Yes I do agree about the dairy products, the worst I have ever been was when a neighbor gave us some cream from her Jersey cow. If the cream is cooked it is even worse and I get bloated as well. Thanks Chester.

Well, it certainly sounds like you are drinking plenty. However, if you are having large amounts of fibre that may still not be enough if the stool is solid. Is the stool solid, or is it just that your gut is slow?

Good to hear that the Phillips colon health is working. What are the ingredients on the label? It is always good to hear about new products that actually work.

Louise

Hi Louise, yes the stool is solid, sometimes squished flat because of the rectocele, sometimes I do up to five a day, not always large amounts. On to Phillips, the ingredients are proprietary blend:- 1.5 billion cells (L.acidophilus, B bifidum, B longum) Potato starch, Gelatin and Silicon dioxide I do not like these three ingredients but I could not find anything else that did not have them. The label suggests one capsule a day with meals, I might up it to two a day after a month, or if I feel it is not doing too good a job. Thanks again for your interest in my embarrasing situation, I have had to leave many rooms and functions because of it. chester

Aha! so the Phillips colon health is a probiotic! Yeah, now that makes sense that it works. Now you are getting some improvement I would be tempted to play around with the amount of fibre so you don't have quite such a high water requirement. It might even be a matter of cutting down on grains a bit. Less starch in the diet will use less water.

Psyllium and flax seen work differently. They produce a mucilage from around the seed which absorbs prodigious amounts of water. That's one of the reasons they suggest whisking it into a juice, so you get the water at the same time. Fruits work because they contain pectin which is another natural form of gel. Once again, their mode of action is to absorb lots of water, but whatever you do, if the bowel slows down, more and more water is removed in the large intestine. Pectin is the stuff that sets jam. The tarter the fruit, the higher the pectin content. Prunes and prune juice are very helpful too. Green apples and oranges are also useful. So is tea, for some reason. Maybe it is the stimulant qualities?

I'm not sure which type it is but there is one type of fibre that causes more gas. There are also some spices, like asafoetida, that are added to legume dishes in Asian cuisine for preventing smelly farts. Beans that are not cooked properly will also produce more gas, so make sure that your soak them well, then cook them properly.

Hard stool moves slower, so you can get a vicious circle. That's where the occasional enema can break the cycle.

I would just keep doing several poos a day and *not worry too much*. I think your body is just making more room when that happens. That's OK. Just go with it. Hopefully the Phillips will get you straightened out. It can take a few weeks to establish a new microflora balance. I take them for a month at a time. You don't notice much change from day to day, but you do after a month. Good luck.

Cheers

Louise

Hi chester,
If you don't like the ingredients in the Phillips, have you tried to get your probiotics through food? I saw your post about the dairy -- does yogurt, kefir, and cheese affect you the same way? Do you include any fermented foods in your diet? The bacteria that causes fermentation is "probiotic." There are plenty of non-dairy probiotic food options -- pickles, saurkraut, kim chee, kombucha, miso, apple cider vinegar, etc. (Even Kashi makes a probiotic cereal called Vive and I'm willing to bet a nice dark homebrew beer is probiotic, too!). Such foods are staples in cuisines all over the world, and our guts truly welcome these bacteria. Just some ideas . . . :-)

Welcome, Apricot,

I wish we could tell you that the posture will stabilize your prolapse, but we just don’t have enough data to make that assurance yet.

Your instincts about the surgeries are right-on. The colposuspension attaches the vagina - via polypropylene mesh - to the anterior ligament of the sacrum. Interestingly, it was through the orthopedic literature that I discovered this ligament to be particularly subject to degenerative changes. All the more reason not to hang the entire pelvic contents - by way of the vagina - to it! I applaud your observation that it is almost exclusively newly post-surgery patients posting positive messages on hysterectomy boards. I imagine a lot of it is wishful thinking, as studies have illustrated that it takes about six months for the full effects of hysterectomy to set in.

What we want to convey to women who have had hysterectomy is the basic anatomical reality that the “hole” is at the back of the pelvis and therefore the key is to hold the pelvic contents at the front of the body away from the pelvic outlet. My deep belief is that all women have this holding ability.

The looming question is, Can post-hysterectomy women prevent the settling out of the skeleton that seems to happen in many (most?) women? It is as if with loss of the pelvic connective tissue the sacrum rotates slightly backward. Perhaps the 5th lumbar vertebra wedges down between the hipbones and becomes incarcerated there. If not this scenario, then something similar results in widening of the hips and loss of lumbar curvature in many post-hyst women.

It may be that trying to maintain or regain natural spinal curvature is painful or even impossible in these women. However, even with a flat back, if the belly is allowed to hold the intestines and bladder well-forward, this may be a good strategy for pelvic organ stabilization. The resulting spinal shape is different from what most of us here are holding - but who cares as long as it works? I observe in many long-term post-hysterectomy women that the lumbar curve flattens, the stomach is quite prominent, and rounding increases at the base of the neck. I am beginning to wonder if this is a marvelous adaptive mechanism that should actually be encouraged to stabilize prolapse? I would like to invite Louise and other members to weigh in on this notion, for it is a very new train of thought for me.

There is little evidence that exogenous estrogen causes enough change in vaginal tissues to affect prolapse. Besides, as we age it becomes a pro-oxidant that is not easily metabolized by our liver. Little do women know that when we lose our estrogen at menopause, we also lose the liver enzymes that metabolize it. Vascular disease is a common example of the inflammatory nature of outside estrogen.

I will look forward to hearing of your progress.

In Spirit and Sisterhood,

Christine

I guess it is possible that a protruding tummy could be protective, but I am not convinced that the body's sense of itself has the intelligence to figure that out. I think the body, like water, probably finds the path of least resistance and the pelvis simply falls open more and back because there isn't anything anymore holding it in and forward. I hope I have that right. Mind you, I have also seen that sort of thing happening in women who have their uterus. It is called slouching in that case.

However, one of the other wonderful features of the body is that it has redundancy of function, eg two eyes, 2 ears, 2 hands, and a myriad of ways that it can compensate when one part is amputated or disabled in some way. Two muscles will take over when another falls in a heap. New paths are forged in the brain after the brain is damaged. I suspect there is much more than the ligaments severed during hysterectiomy holding a woman's hub together afterwards. And if that body is exercised to keep its other parts honed and cared for well, perhaps it can overcome its own tendence towards 'pelvic collapse' without the help of the uterine ligaments that previously held it together from the inside.

That would explain why some women who have had hysterectomy do not seem to have this collapsed posture, and seem to be functioning quite well post-hysterectomy.

To say that exercise and fitness and wellbeing is the answer for these women who suffer after hysterectomy would be over-simplifying it but their overall health will still respond to our clothing suggestions, they will still respond to deep belly breathing, and generally tall posture, lifting techniques, our sound diet and many other suggestions, even if their pelvic geometry changes are at odds with aspects of posture and some of the exercises in the workout.

Like all of us who have a uterus, there are no guarantees in this work, just strong evidence. Nor is there any guarantee that we will live to an old age with all our faculties, and able to leap tall nursing homes with a single bound. All we can do is grasp all the tools we have in our reach and go try them. We have all experienced failure with one sure fire fix that has worked well for another person. There may be women with uterus who cannot make WW techniques work for themselves.

We can all either sit around and moan about how bad things are or keep our ears pricked for healing opportunites and grasp them and try them out. If they don't work, but are good for our bodies, we would be mad to discard them out of hand.

L

I get mine from the BTD store, it's called ARA6. I'm in the UK so I do it by phone to a Scottish company, in the US you can get it by going to the BTD website - if you google blood type diet or d'adamo it will come up, let me know if you have any probs and I'll send you a link. I was getting a different UK brand but I think thr ARA6 is better - apparently there are different grades, food and pharmaceutical, ARA6 is the latter. Judith

I haven't had a hysterectomy myself but I happen to know many women who have. Interestingly, they are all in their early to late 60s and had them about 30 years ago, so it must have been all the rage in the UK at that time!

Anyway, out of all of them, only one has a fairly mild cystocele, but probably getting more bothersome, and she is the only one who hasn't had children, or any pregnancies. So that both proves Christine's point about hysterectomy leading to POP and also, I think, gives hope to other post-hyst women that it isn't an inevitable outcome (although who knows what might happen as they grow older of course, long-term studies would be so useful). Also, interestingly, the friend with POP has the least upright posture, with a slight stoop (sorry if you're reading this) and is currently working on it with Alexander Technique and cranial osteopathy. She's not too keen on doing loads of exercises! I'll let you know how she gets on as she doesn't post here but I'm sure she'll be happy for me to do this.
All the others have had exceedingly good posture all the time I've known them and lead very active lives, lifting heavy things etc, one of them in her mid-sixties goes skydiving, no back or POP probs, not yet anyway.

So I think that Chrisitine and Louise are both right. The body has an amazing compensatory ability given half a chance, and WW posture can only be beneficial. Judith

Thanks for your info, I will try that on the website, where are you in the UK? I was born in Epsom Surrey and lived in Ashtead for 20 years, I loved it there and would go back in an instant if my husband wanted to. Chester

Hi Chester,
I am in North London. Sorry that you'd rather be here but can't. I have 2 brothers who have a foreign-born wife/partner and I know how difficult it can be to deal with that dislocation. Let me know how you get on with the larch fibre if you decide to go for it. I also mentioned food combining ie not eating high-density starch and proteins at the same meal. It helps me a lot digestively but it's hard to do it with low blood sugar, which I also have. Judith

Hi Judith, I hope you don't get the message I screwed up on, I managed to delete it except for two words, or part of them. Anyway I found a co. that has larch fibre, in California, they will send me some on a risk free trial, I was suprised how inexpensive it is, I expected to have to pay a lot more. It is not that I can't live in England, it is just that we find it financially beneficial to live here. I have not lived in England since 1972 (I bet it has changed a lot), I spent 2 years in Australia, 32 years in Canada and now 3 three years here, so when I get homesick, it is hard to figure out for which home. Anyway take care and thanks for the help. Chester.

Thanks for the ideas, I will try and include more fermented foods in my diet, I am sure Guiness would work wonders, I know my mother drank one everyday, where we live, it is very hard to get things that are uncommon, I drive 200 miles to do grocery shopping once every 6 weeks, next time I go I will get some dark beer. Thanks Chester

It truly is astonishing how strong and stable the body is. Oh...I must correct something I said: The pelvis Never rotates even the slightest bit backward. If it did we could not walk because our pubic bones would dislocate with every step. Rather, the *sacrum* rocks slightly backward to become more vertical. This makes that section of the spine (S1-L5) more susceptible to shear forces and the possibility then arises that L5 can become wedged down between the hipbones where it formally could not go. This is my theory, anyway. :)

At any rate, in many women with these sorts of spinal changes the belly seems to rotate upwards so that it is carried directly under the breasts. I think the center of gravity may shift a bit higher, too.

We will have to noodle on this. I have no doubt that if we put our heads together we will figure out stability for every woman! The sooner we can remove women from the medically managed queue, the better for all of us and for the planet.

Christine