This week, Her Campus Guelph hosted guest speaker, Amanda Homen, to begin a discussion about female pelvic health and sexual education.
Amanda is a pelvic health physiotherapist and very passionate about educating women on their pelvic floors – an area that most women ignore.
However, Amanda’s talk highlighted many of the important features of the pelvic floor and brought to light some of the harmful habits that many young women engage in unknowingly, while offering solutions to correct them.
While the presentation was very informative and packed with helpful information, here are five main takeaways for those who couldn’t be there!
1. No More “Just In Case” Peeing
That’s right, your mom might have set you up for this bad pelvic floor habit from a young age, but in her defense, she really didn’t know any better. There is no need to go to the bathroom “just in case”; because you’re getting in the car for a long road trip, or heading into a three-hour lecture. If you don’t feel like you have to pee, then don’t go! It can actually damage your pelvic floor functioning in the long run and *spoiler alert* you’re still going to have to pee again anyway. (The only time to make an exception to this rule is after sex. Peeing after sex is important to get rid of any bacteria, so this is the one time where peeing just in case is alright.)
2. Stay Hydrated
This was a reoccurring theme in Amanda’s discussion – staying hydrated is crucial to the functioning of all of your body’s systems. Everything from the skin on your face, to your vulva, is affected my improper hydration. Drinking enough water is crucial to ensure regular bowel movements and bathroom breaks, and to keep your pelvic floor and sexual organs in tip-top shape.
3. No Hovering
As Amanda pointed out in her talk several times, you cannot get an STI from sitting on a toilet seat, nor will you contract any other harmful diseases. The woman who made us all believe that is nothing but a big, fat liar with horrible pelvic floor functioning. When you hover over the toilet seat instead of properly sitting down, you’re activating all the outer pelvic and glute muscles, which impairs the ability of your pelvic floor to activate. The additional stress can cause long-term pelvic floor functioning problems over the long term.
4. There is no “Normal”
This is so important to keep in mind when discussing sexual health especially. Your normal will be completely different from someone else’s normal. While you might suffer through 7 day, painful periods every month, another girl may have an incredibly light and pain-free 2 day period every month. Neither of these is necessarily “abnormal”, they’re just different. Another important note Amanda made is that we all look different too. Just like our faces are all different, everyone’s vulva looks different as well – and that’s perfectly okay!
5. Have a Look – Regularly
Us women are more than willing to take razors, hot wax, and lasers near our lady bits, but when it comes to actually looking at them, we all hide in shame. It’s actually a little ridiculous when you think about all the dangerous objects we put near such sensitive bits of our body without even looking at them. Looking at your vulva and getting familiar with it is so important in order to detect changes early on. Taking 5-10 minutes a month to grab a mirror and make sure everything looks the same down there could be the difference between catching an abnormal growth that’s been growing for one month or discovering an abnormal growth that’s been there for years. Pap smears don’t occur regularly enough to rely on those alone to catch abnormal changes – you need to be monitoring these changes on your own time. Early detection could save your life.
6. Be Your Own Health Care Advocate
Along with monitoring yourself for abnormal changes, you need to be your own health care advocate. If something feels wrong or off, if you’re uneasy about a procedure or a contraceptive, don’t just go along with it because your doctor says so. You have a right to refuse anything that makes you uncomfortable and request a second opinion. Do your own research, speak to a variety of people, and most importantly, use your own judgment. This is your body and you’re the one who decides what happens to it and you should be comfortable with any and all decisions you make about it.