Rectal Prolapse - 23 and new to Whole Woman

I hear your pain. I too have a rectal prolapse and going to rectal pelvic PT. I will be posting my story as soon as I get a chance so you can compare but in the meantime keep doing what you are doing. I have to find where it talks about posture as haven't gotten to that yet but am dealing with almost identical issues.

Are you doing the kegels from both ends? My therapist has me doing 10 winks (pull from behind) count to 10 in and count to 10 relaxed and then 10 from the bottom for the other muscles - same amount and idea. I think it may be working as I have had a yellowy anal discharge which seems better but I think the therapist shoved some inside my vagina when she tested my sphincter tone from the vagina. I now have a yellowy discharge from the vagina.

As I said I will post in the next day or so. If you want I can let you know the next exercise she gave me with legs up on a 12" bin.

Welcome to Whole Woman!

First of all, are we talking about rectal prolapse, where the lining of the rectal canal is bulging from your anal sphincter? Or rectocele, the stool-trapping pocket that forms when the front rectal wall pushes into the back vaginal wall?

My guess is that it is rectocele, but I cannot fathom why any ethical physician would suggest rectopexy and bowel resection for this condition.

Either way, focused “strengthening” or even relaxation of your “pelvic floor” muscles is simply a wrong strategy.

The beginning and end of the prolapse story is that intraabdominal pressure (which we create a tremendous amount of every time we inhale) is moving through your abdominal and pelvic cavities in an unfavorable way. Straining against the toilet seat simply intensifies what has likely been happening since you left childhood. Before then, no one told you to pull your belly in and keep it pulled in with lots of ab work and tight clothing.

Your pelvic organs are supported by your lower abdominal wall, not a muscular “pelvic floor.” Your true bony pelvic floor are your pubic bones that come together underneath you like straps of a saddle (you can easily verify this yourself). You have a wall of muscle at the back of your body.

When you were born, you did have a pelvic floor, directly opposite your respiratory diaphragm. You also had a straight spine and pelvic organs carried very high in your torso and in line with their channels (bladder/urethra, uterus/vagina, anorectum/sigmoid colon).

When you started to crawl, you now had a pelvic wall behind you, just like a horse or cat. However, unlike the quadrupedal pelvic wall, which is very strong and muscular because it wags a tail, your pelvic wall is thin, sinewy and cushioned with lots of fascia, or connective tissue.

When you stood up, you did not rotate your pelvis backward 90º into a bowl position. Only non-human primates do this because their lumbar spine is very short and inflexible. The only way you stood up was by profoundly curving your lumbar spine. Your pelvis has never moved from its quadrupedal position.

Once you were running and jumping and cartwheeling through life, the action of your respiratory diaphragm pulling your lumbar spine forward with every breath also forced your pelvic organs down and forward into your lower belly. Now your pelvic organs are bent a full 90º away from their channels to be positioned right behind your lower abdominal wall. These sharp angles form our urinary continence and prolapse-prevention systems.

The “pelvic floor” is a deep-seated misconception based on a 500-year anatomical error. You have a pelvic wall, whose primary role is to manage intraabdominal pressure. Every time you breathe in, your body is moving your pelvic organs forward. Unless, of course, you are habitually holding your belly in.

When the belly is held in, intraabdominal pressure can no longer pin the organs into position at the front of the body, and begins to push them backward toward the pelvic outlet.

In the case of rectocele, a “tipped” uterus (a consequence of holding the belly in) slackens the vaginal walls, making it much easier for increases in pressure (straining on the toilet) to push the front rectal wall into the back vaginal wall, aka rectocele.

There is an anatomic skeletal alignment that develops through childhood, which we call Whole Woman Posture. This is the alignment that sends intraabdominal pressure through the system in an anatomically sound way.

Hopefully you can see this has nothing whatsoever to do with a so-called pelvic floor. All of the “elevators”, “winks” and “long and quick squeezes” are simply meaningless. The concept is in absolute opposition to what is evidenced in our development as human females. In fact, every time you lie on your back and squeeze, you are drawing your bladder toward your front vaginal wall, and your rectum toward your back vaginal wall - in other words, in the direction of prolapse.

Tightness and discomfort in the perineum is directly related to pelvic wall contracture and untoward internal pressures. Working to consistently lift your tailbone while keeping all other aspects of natural alignment will slowly relieve these symptoms.

If you search the forum for acid reflux and hiatal hernia you will find that WW posture is indicated here as well.

I believe progestogen-based bc can indeed affect a young woman’s digestion by the systemic effect of severely disrupting the microbiology of the vagina, cervix and uterus.

I would suggest, The Miraculous Self-Healing Vagina, which can be found in the WW Store.

Wishing you well,

Christine

Christine - Just a question - I am not sure about kerr94 but my prolapse is definitely a rectal prolapse coming out of the anus and not a rectocele. Do you have any suggestions for a partial mucosal rectal prolapse? I am 80 so I know my age is against me.

I am going to post how I got it (unbelieveable physician treatment) as a new topic -- it has been worse than what I went thru with breast cancer.

Thank you.

Hi Suggi and thank you for clarifying. At WW we do our best to help women understand the true nature of their anatomy.

First of all, your rectum is tightly adhered to your lower spine. If you read my post above, I hope you understood that generally speaking these conditions are directly caused by abnormal forces blowing toward the back passage. Full-thickness prolapse of the rectal wall, prolapse of the rectal lining, prolapse of the anal wall, intussusception, and hemorrhoids are all manifestations of the same root cause.

There is no surgical cure for rectal prolapse that does not come without severe risk of rectal paralysis. Time and again we have heard from women who went ahead with rectopexy, only to end up with a colostomy bag, or having to manually evacuate their rectum for the rest of their life.

While the mechanical cause of rectal prolapse can be considered primary, these tissues would not so readily separate from their foundation to be blown toward the outlet if that connective tissue were strong and healthy. A good anti-inflammatory diet with lots of natural vitamin C is essential to stabilizing and reversing these conditions.

To prevent or improve intussusception, WW LoPo toileting posture is a must every time you need to move your bowels. In this posture you not only lean forward and lift your bottom slightly off the seat (no need to hover, just get your weight off the seat), but reach your arms and torso out front as far as possible. Placing a small table or chair in front of you to rest on is best. In this way the sigmoid colon (which most often telescopes down into the rectum) is stretched out in front of the rectum, preventing it from being pushed back and down into the rectum.

A short-term diet especially designed to repair connective tissue and enliven the bowel is essential to the healing process. Here is my offering of such a diet.

Christine’s Diet for Rectal Prolapse:

Organic short grain brown rice
Sea vegetables (dulce, kelp, etc.)
Avocados
Leafy greens
Sea salt
Oats
Flax - fresh ground
Honey - local and raw
High-quality butter
Apples
Bananas
Lime water

Wishing you well,

Christine

Would any of your books help me? I kinda got the drift of what you are saying to have a BM but any pics/diagrams to go along with it would help - just so i would know if I am going about it correctly. I have to find out about this posture thing also. It all started with undiagnosed until severe Graves disease (doc thought I was just another hypochrondriac until she finally did a blood test for thyroid). By then it was so severe I needed to kill the thyroid off with RAI as I was in thyroid storm and the endo was afraid I would have a heart attack. She overdosed me to make sure the gland was indeed dead and then I went so hypo (top of TSH range around 4 and mine was 73 - on thyroid hormone replacement) so I lost my gut motility. The hypo severely affected my whole digestive system, thus the prolapse and along with it mucous leakage. Now I think I may have a vaginal infection from the PT therapist doing a vaginal exam and perhaps pushing some discharge from the back door into the vagina. I think I also need a urine culture. Trouble is I am so atrophic that if my vagina sees a speculum coming it automatically starts to bleed -- so how do I protect myself not only for the trip to the gyn but also after so nothing runs to the front area while I am healing as I don't want to end up with sepsis.. Not an easy task.

I wasn't kidding when I said going thru breast cancer was a breeze compared to this curse. I was also very ill now for over a year with first hyper and now hypo and now the prolapse.

Docs do not believe that we as women know our bodies better than anyone but they do not listen. If I had been a man and complained about the things I did, I bet I would not have been put off again and again.

Anything you feel I should purchase from your website that would help, please let me know.
Thank you.

Hi Suggi,

Rectal prolapse will have a prominent chapter in the new edition of my book Saving the Whole Woman. However it will be 2020 before the book is ready for release. Right now WW Fundamentals and The Whole Woman Way to VulvaVaginal Health would be my recommendations:

https://whole-woman.thinkific.com/courses/whole-woman-fundamentals

https://whole-woman.thinkific.com/courses/the-whole-woman-way-to-vulva-v...

It is women like you, Suggi, for whom I’m creating my new post-menopause course. When I say you, I’m really speaking to the broader *You* - all older women reading this post. I realize that you, Suggi, are deeply embedded in the medical system and I certainly do not want to cause you additional stress or worry. However, I cannot help but express that older women are the most medically mistreated population in the US and elsewhere.

What if instead of turning left out of your driveway to head to your next painful and humiliating gynecology appointment, You turned right instead and headed to art class, music lessons, or a nature hike with friends?

My guess (remember I am speaking to the broader You) is that the discharge You are experiencing is the result of long-term tamoxifen treatment for breast cancer. Tamoxifen causes an unpleasant yellow discharge. Tamoxifen is an “anti-estrogen”, but what your doctor does not tell You is that it is also “anti-life”. He/she will tell You tamoxifen increases your risk of uterine cancer, and therefore You must have regular gynecologic exams every three to six months. He/she will not tell You, however, that tamoxifen also places You at risk of developing liver cancer and deadly blood clots.

A time will come, perhaps not in my lifetime but certainly in my grandaughter’s, that breast cancer, like cervical, uterine, bladder and bowel cancers, will become diseases of the past. Science is already very clear about what causes breast cancer and how it is prevented. I cannot say more now, but must gather all my resources into a body of work that clearly illustrates this is indeed the case.

For now I hope you can positively affect your rectal prolapse condition through WW methods.

Christine

Hi Kerr,

Rather than assume your digestive symptoms are a result of a deficiency of synthetic estrogen and progesterone, perhaps you should take a look at the effects of anti-acid medication on the gut.

The intestinal tract is filled with estrogen receptors, but these are primarily estrogen beta receptors, which I have written extensively about. No doctor, scientist, or hormone expert can tell you how all those dozens of different estrogenic metabolites from the birth control pills were acting upon estrogen beta receptors to cause unfavorable transcription in the cells of your rectal wall. I think it is very possible that you and Suggi share a similar etiology in the development of rectal prolapse.

On another note…your natural menstrual cycles are what support microbial health in your vagina and uterus. The reproductive-age vagina is its own ‘engine’ in terms of beneficial bacteria production, because estradiol prompts vaginal cells to store the carbohydrate glycogen that feeds friendly bacteria from your own environment. A healthy vagina contains 95% lactobacillus species.

Although not one study exists on the subject, it is obvious that these beneficial species do not simply stay in the vagina. It is well known that they travel to the bladder to keep the bladder walls healthy, but it seems obvious they travel much further than that - to many other tissues lining organs and joints in the body. *How* is the question I am not prepared to answer at this time.

When a woman interrupts this cycle with The Pill, she is suspended in the progesterone stage of the cycle. Even estrogen/progestogen combo pills dampen the normal estradiol cycle and disrupt the estrogen-glycogen-lactobacillus cycle. This is why women become more susceptible to vaginal infections and STDs while on the pill.

To answer your question, however, LoPo posture is simply leaning/stretching as far forward as possible to move your bowels. Place a chair or something to lean on in front of you. Your torso should be basically horizontal with your bottom lifted slightly off the seat.

With this post I am going to leave the forum for an extended period of time. My ongoing hope is to create female sovereignty from a dangerous and damaging system of medicine that will never know how to return women to health.

I leave you in the very capable hands of Surviving60, Aging Gracefully, Aussie Soul Sister and many other women who generously lend a hand to share the WW work with any and all women who happen to find their way here.

Christine

This is absolutely my experience, that kegels worsen and cause prolapse. It's shocking that it continues to be rammed down our throats by the 'expert' physios and doctors when it's so obviously not working for so many women!!!!

Sorry, this was a reply to Christine's earlier explanation about the anatomical reasons why the conventional kegels are a bad idea, and how to utilise our natural intraabdominal pressure...

If kegels helped, I think we would have wiped prolapse off the face of the earth by now, from all the kegeling. I myself did them for decades, and Christine's explanation instantly resonated with me.

Here is one reason I believe that women and doctors continue to think kegels work. Many women are instructed to do them post partum. PP prolapse often "heals" all by itself (that, too, was my experience). If someone is kegeling during that time, the kegels may get the credit. I myself did not kegel post partum. But for many years afterwards, did them quite a bit, because that was the conventional wisdom of the day, for a better sex life, blah blah blah..........clearly they did not do me any good. Wait a minute - they did! They contributed to the eventual return of prolapse which brought me to WW, the best place on earth. - Surviving

I’m looking forward to the new book and any info it might have about things discussed in this thread. I’m thankful for the things that Christine came on to share. I am not sure what all my prolapsing involves, but I can eliminate when leaning so far forward that my torso is almost horizontal, especially during my cycle. I have a hamper in my bathroom that I have used to lean on from time to time. Obviously one has to use common sense and make sure to keep stability and use something sturdy. I do not have any external rectal prolapsing and like I said I’m not sure what all my pelvic prolapsing entails but I am sure I have cycsticele and rectocele. I also have retroflexed uterus and lots of issues with chronic sacral pain and such since the time of my prolapsing . The principles and work of whole woman along with certain supplements have helped me get my elimination back to where my pain is far less and my quality of life is better and my elimination is more complete. I do use splinting as well by gently pushing up on my perineum when eliminating. Not always are all the helps necessary but I never abandon the whole woman principle of toileting that has a lady lean forwar and get the primary weight off of the toilet seat. I don’t hover but more tip forward.
If I may add:
I did also have much gluteal pain, tailbone pain, and general pain in the levator ani musclr. A feeling of strained or almost numb oddness. I had had My baby. Rubbing arnica oil into the area around your buttocks muscle may help that feeling on the left that you describe. Be gentle and think of it as introducing circulation to the area with a gentle massage.

Hi
I am not english speaker
I have the same issue but i buy your dvd from this site ,is there a difference between the links you put and the dvd on the site?
What you recomend me to buy for this prolapse?
Yhank you

Kalanit - the links are to the Store items on the site. There is no difference. I believe some items can still be purchased as DVD's but it will not be that way much longer, everything is streaming. - Surviving

I decided to buy the new cours first aid and exercises
And try it
Lanny answer me yesterday night
It seems that my posture is like christine explain
I hope i will get some help here

ww didnt help your pain?
my pain is because of the diffult of empty bowels and straining
what is "hover"?
thanx

Yes, whole woman has helped my pain to the degree that it helps me pass stool and gas out of my bowel more regularly.

By the statement “ I don’t hover” I meant that I do have my body touching the toilet seat. Hovering would be standing over but not touching the seat at all.