Unveiling the Beliefs from Pelvic Providers

Male pelvic health. Let's address it. So most therapists are like, what? Why does males. Well, most people are like, why do males need help? Males need a lot of help. They actually need more help than they ask for. And I can say as an occupational therapist, as a physical therapist, there is so much we can do to help men out from the pelvic health perspective. Many of you guys know I lived in Northern Virginia where every single male I saw was honestly from the tech industry. They either worked at Google, they used to work at aol. It's so tech driven there. It is like the Silicon Valley, but on the east coast. Because 60 to 70% of all Internet traffic comes through Northern Virginia. People don't know that fact, but that's where AOL was founded. And so we, we get a lot of engineers, we get a lot of tech people, like the actual, not the cute ones from Silicon Valley, meaning like the forward facing ones. We actually get the people that are behind the scenes on the computers all day long doing really the heavy lifting comes from Northern Virginia. And so what I realized after treating over 10,000 patients is most of the males that actually come in person or virtually and work with us are actually engineers. I don't know the connection, I've never done research on it, but I can tell you most of them are engineers. And the reason why my theory is behind this is they have a different kind of brain. When they come in, they want to know that A plus B equals C. And the hardest thing about pelvic floor is there's no MRI image to say you have this dysfunction. So in their brain it's very hard to prove and to themselves that their issue is a pelvic floor issue because they need to physically see. Like an MRI would say, like, okay, well, that's the issue. Even though we know most time MRIs can lead us down the wrong path anyways. But that's what they need to see. And so they want you to prove that. And so I have come to realize working with these guys and is they really need a lot of reassurance that this is the right track that they should be going down. Because there is so little promotion on males in pelvic health and that even males have a pelvic floor. I think that is even a misconception that males don't have a pelvic floor. They have the exact same pelvic floor as we do. Except, you know, some parts are longer, some parts are shorter. And like I was even on the COVID of ABTA magazine. Because I really dove into males at one point here in California. My caseload was at least 50% males. That's all I was seeing. So I'm very aware of male pelvic health and I've treated thousands of males with all different kind of conditions. And so I can say going back to my engineers is I believe there is a big correlation between engineers and males, male pelvic health. I also believe that engineers brains, how their brain works and how their brain is connected. I believe the brain is connected to the pelvic floor. I believe because they, they study the computer like so intensely that something in their brain, they either forget to breathe, they either are so focused on the problem that they're trying to solve because a lot of them are under pressure. They don't say, I mean, they do say this, like, to me, but I don't say this out loud of like, really trying to solve these bigger problems of like how not to crash an Amazon server. And by the way, the headquarters is there too. So like the storage, right. The cloud is there. There's so many data centers there where I live. So all this stuff they control. And it's a lot of pressure. And so it's like, I think they're so focused on making sure the problem that their company is asking them to solve is that they can solve it. And in return, they don't at all pay attention to their body or what their body is feeling, doing, whatever. And I think long term, because they're sitting a lot, they're intensely focusing on one thing, they're like this really intense into the computer that overall it massively affects their pelvic floor. I don't know if it's because they're not breathing correctly. I don't know if it's just because their brain and how it connects and their nervous system, I'm unsure about that part. But for treatment wise, I work on all of that because I believe if you work on all of it, something's got to help. Calming the nervous system. Getting them to change their seating habits, getting them to understand taking a breath, getting them to calm their nervous system when they have a really stressful situation that occurred because something went down. Getting them to learn, you know, how to stretch, a lot of them sit all day and then go to the gym and do strengthening stuff. A lot of times that's not the thing that initially that helps them get over it. It's a lot of times stretching at first actually helps them more than the strengthening. I'm not saying never strengthen. I'M not saying that. I'm saying there's different phases. And the first phase, what I've seen work is they have to lengthen and get blood flow to the area, which means they got to move a little bit more, which means we got to think differently. And I got to change overall, like, how they operate. And they can't so intensely be involved in a project that they're doing. They have to pay attention to their body. And I believe it's such an underserved area. And a lot of people need help from Google. So if you're out there and you have access to Google or an Amazon or some other tech, you know, company that really needs a lot of engineers, they massively need our help. I believe that's honestly probably the most underserved, underserved area in our field is male pelvic health, especially for engineers. Quick interruption.

For those that have questions on today's episode, please text my personal number. It's 703-783-2388. I'd be happy to answer any questions that you have to get you unstuck. Let's get back to the episode.

And they probably don't talk about it, but I would probably take a guess of one in four engineers have pelvic pain, if not even higher. I'm making up that stat, guys. I didn't get that from everywhere, anywhere. But I would say based on what I've treated, a lot of engineers have pelvic pain. They just don't talk about it. So maybe going into a company and offering that service could, you know, have them have the employees work longer or more satisfied because they're not thinking about crap. I can't sit in this chair because I got all this pain down here, or I can't go live my life because of this. So all that is super important when it comes to males and pelvic floor. And I know some of you guys are like, well, Kelly, I'm just uncomfortable treating males because I don't know, especially if you're mobile or, you know, even in the clinic or even virtually. Like, I don't know what to say to them. I don't know how to help them. But we already have all the tools. It's the same thing as treating a female. It's the exact same thing. There are questions where I still have to ask them. Like, because let's just say if I was dealing with erectile dysfunction, I still, I need to know their fantasies because males are bigger when it comes to having, you know, an orgasm. And stuff on fantasies. So I need to know that. I need to know what makes them tick. I need to know what turns them on and not in like a sexual way. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm trying to figure put all the pieces of the puzzle together. So a lot of times what I discovered, if males are having erectile dysfunction, it is something that mentally is going on, okay, less than physical. And sometimes it is physical with going back to my engineers, like I had a 28 year old, I'll never forget this 28 years old engineer, worked at Netflix. And they make like $400,000 a year, something insane. And it's really hard to get that job. So it's very stressful. And basically they burn out within six months. Like that's like the turnover rate. It's like expected because that's how heavy they have to work. He had erectile dysfunction during that time. Well, why do you think he had erectile dysfunction? Because he was sitting for, I don't know, like 16 hours a day trying to get Netflix to do whatever he was doing at Netflix. Well, we modified his lifestyle, got blood flow back to the area, modified his gym activities and bam, his erection was back. That's it. And so it could be as simple as that. It could also mean that someone has a heart issue. It could mean that maybe someone's testosterone's off. It could be, you know, a 40 year old, that their testosterone is like the level of a 60 year old. And that could also mean that that's a problem. Right? So you have to look at all the pieces of the puzzle. It's just not one way. It's just not just muscular, skeletal. So I want to know mentally what's going on. I want to know physically what's going on. I want to know emotionally what's going on. I need to know about their stress levels, I need to know about their job, I need to know about their function all day long, like what their movements are. I have to know all of that. And it's our job as therapists to put all the pieces of the puzzle together so that we can solve the whole piece and not just say go to the urologist, because that's typically what happens. Get diagnosed with chronic prostatitis and then all of a sudden, you know, you're on, what do you call it, meds, what is it called? An antibiotic for two or three months, nothing happens. You still got pain. It's not chronic prostatitis and you shouldn't have been on the antibiotics. It's because something else is going on that wasn't screened for. And so my big push to all this is to get people to open their brain and be like, okay, like, I can treat males. It's not as scary as I think. Personally, I've never had a male, you know, do anything inappropriate, say anything inappropriate to me. Maybe it's just me, but, like, I've never had that happen. I also come in very assertive and very direct. And so I think males are less. Are not as scary as people think to treat. And I think they're so underserved. And I think we could do a lot better job of treating them and giving them the help that they need, because I know we have the tools to help solve their problem. And that's my lesson of today, is help. Males out there needs to be a lot of attention towards them. If you're comfortable with it, because you're not comfortable with it, maybe you can shadow someone. But I do think there's a big need and a big area of help that they can, that they can use. And because this stuff is more AI driven and all that kind of stuff, I believe there's going to be more males with pelvic floor issues, especially on the rise. And so I hope we are the people to empower the males to get their pelvic floor looked at and do the thing so that they can continue to work and live their life that they want. And that's it. Guys, you guys need help with it? We do have diagnosis charts on how to actually treat males. So if you need help with that, you can text me at 703-783-2388 and I'd be happy to help. All right, guys, bye. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening. And you guys can text me at any time. It truly is my number.

You.

If you feel that you have questions or that you feel stuck, so text me at 703-783-2388. Text me at any time and I will respond. And yes, it is me. So hopefully we'll talk soon so we can get you unstuck. Thanks, guys, for joining and thank you, Jane, for sponsoring Pelby Biz podcast. We can't thank you enough so that we can help more providers across the world.

Thanks.