Joe: 00:15

Welcome back to another episode of the Freedom Talks podcast, everybody. This is your host, Joe Ogden, from Fox Point. This week, what we're gonna be talking about and the topic in February that is big for us here and what we're going to focus on this month is talking about men's health. I'm one of the men's pelvic health providers here at Freedom Physical Therapy, along with Nina Olson, who's also outstanding outstanding outstanding pelvic health physical therapist as well as orthopedic physical therapist, in Fox Point. As of the time of recording this podcast, we are the only 2, at Freedom currently that treat male pelvic health.

Joe: 01:02

So what I wanna talk about today is more so just giving more information on how do you know as a man if you're having a pelvic health dysfunction? And and kinda just defining some of these symptoms and and knowing that there is something we can do about it. A little backstory, I I've posted this on our our Freedom social media page and some videos as well as my own personal stuff is I'm one of those people at 27 years old that I've had a bladder irritation and bladder urgency for as long as I can remember. I I think in in high school, it it was I thought it was normal. In college, it got worse.

Joe: 01:46

And every time I talk to someone, I kinda felt like I got blown off. It wasn't until I found another physical therapist actually online that, was talking about it. And I thought the symptoms that he was describing with bladder urgency and, when you feel like you have to go, you immediately have to find a bathroom. Or wherever you go, you take a a mental note of where the bathroom is. And he had some tips, and I worked on some of it, and and things got better.

Joe: 02:14

I knew then that there was probably other people out there that were just like me. So I found out some continuing education. I worked here with Nina at Freedom who, again, outstanding physical therapist, outstanding awesome coworkers, one of the nicest human beings, I think, you'll ever meet. So she was super helpful in finding a class, to help me, you know, find a certification in this and then start helping other people. So first off, men in general, because of our societal role, we have this this just big strong man presentation.

Joe: 02:51

And with that comes decreased health outcomes. Statistically, that that that's true. And that's because in society, men go to the doctor less. So a lot of times, there's things that we can do to improve any sort of health outcome with men. We just don't do it because they don't go.

Joe: 03:10

It's very straightforward. It's okay to go to the doctor. And one thing that I think is super important to talk about, and this is where I've been, it's okay to talk about some of these dysfunctions that we're having. It's not normal. 1st and foremost with male public health, it's not normal to have to urinate all the time.

Joe: 03:32

It's not normal the second you have a drop of liquid that it's got to come out. It's not normal to have pelvic pain. It's not normal to have painful sex. It's not normal to have bowel pain. It's not normal to feel like it hurts when you go to the bathroom.

Joe: 03:51

All that stuff is okay to talk about. And what's really important and especially in Wisconsin as I've talked in past podcast, what's really nice in Wisconsin is we have direct access. You can come see a physical therapist. And this is not something that every physical therapist knows. This is a specific niche.

Joe: 04:09

Just looking up online a male public health practitioner, you've got to find a physical therapist that can do it. The nice part here in the Milwaukee area, we have a lot of people, specifically here at Freedom, that can help these things. They can get better. So I think 1st and foremost, again, I I think it's important to really just talk about black and white. It is not normal for those symptoms to be happening.

Joe: 04:34

We can do something about it. For a while, me personally, I just accepted that. Well, this is just how I am. I have a small bladder. Well, a lot of it turned out that I just have pelvic floor weakness.

Joe: 04:44

That's why I feel like I have to go to the bathroom all the time. Improve that pelvic floor strength and I felt better. So if you're experiencing any of the things that I just described, right off the bat, come see one of us. We'd love to help you. So kind of backing up even farther, we'll kind of talk about just some of the reasons that the pelvic floor is weak in general.

Joe: 05:08

I know when I first started doing some of this stuff and and learning about it, men like to overpower the pelvic floor. So when you activate those muscles, a lot of times we're squeezing the glutes, squeezing the quads, squeezing the abs, and we're overpowering that muscle. It's just like any shoulder exercise. When you try and strengthen the rotator cuff, a lot of times we're strengthening the deltoid, which is over the top of the rotator cuff. So sometimes we gotta back things off to really make sure that we are addressing a specific pelvic floor weakness.

Joe: 05:40

Another thing that I think happens is men in general are very tight in specifically in mobility. What I think it's super important to make sure that we do is we gotta make sure that the hips stay mobile in all directions. The frontal plane, transverse plane, sagittal plane. All three dimensions of movement should be very, very good. Yoga is a great thing to do because that works on fluid mobility, dynamic mobility.

Joe: 06:14

I do think it's equally important to be doing static stretches for your hamstrings, for your quads, for your glutes, for your piriformis. All that's really important. But to take that to the next level, we need to work on being mobile while we're moving because that's that's life in general. We also need to work on the mobility of the lower back. The ability to separate your back from your hips and have some rotation, that's critical for the pelvic floor.

Joe: 06:40

What I see happen a lot is men were so tight that the body can't move. And then from there, it can't move, which creates weakness because the body's just not moving. Everything just tightens down. So what I've seen is even again, all of this also is personal experience. I directly know how this is affects my my life.

Joe: 07:03

What happens is we unlock the pelvic mobility, hip mobility, back mobility. We then increase strength. We start with the pelvic floor. There's specific protocols to work on. Then we just increase overall core activation, core control, leg control, leg strength.

Joe: 07:22

All of that in itself then creates just a better system. Now for people that, also have bladder urgency or even erectile dysfunction. On top of all that stuff that I just talked about, there's also specific protocols that we can work on to improve the bladder urgency, to improve the erectile dysfunction. That's another thing too that I I didn't talk about at the beginning, but I'll I'll touch on a little bit here. It's not normal to not have an erection.

Joe: 08:01

That's a very normal part of life. I see a lot of people and even some younger people that have erectile dysfunction think, oh, that's just normal. That's not normal. There's things we can do as physical therapists and help you improve that, especially if it's a want in your life. It's a normal part of life to want to do that.

Joe: 08:22

Very normal, and it's okay to talk about. So, again, part of this podcast also is is just kinda normalizing this conversation. It took me a while to talk about this. Now it's it's just a part of what I do, just helping people. So another big thing as well, we'll kinda move forward here also because this is a big part of pelvic health in general, is prostate cancer is very high, especially in men in the US.

Joe: 08:52

So there's also things we can do in that stage as well. And it depends on where someone's at. You know, depending on how things are progressing and and how things are presenting, a lot of times we see patients that are kind of in this just watch stage. We're just gonna watch and see what happens. Prostate's enlarged, but we don't wanna surgically take it out.

Joe: 09:14

Okay. Great. Sometimes what happens is we're having bladder urgency because that prostate's enlarged, pressing on the bladder. Okay. Great.

Joe: 09:23

Let's work on some pelvic strength to offset some of that pressure. Let's work on being more mobile. Let's work on being stronger. A lot of times, also, let's say the prostate is removed, so we're a postprostectomy position with a patient. Very common.

Joe: 09:43

The number one goal is to stop any leakage. Goes back to what we were just talking about. Mobility strength. There's specific strengthening protocols that we can use to stop leakage. That's what we do.

Joe: 09:59

That's what we help people with. So prosoprostectomy, the number one goal is to stop any leakage. If there's any ED attached to that, again, the first thing we need to stop is leakage. Once we address any leakage, we then can go to the ED part. Again, from there, also, we need to improve core strength, core control, leg strength, leg control, leg mobility.

Joe: 10:25

An overarching theme is we just have to move better and address the specific limitations. And the last part we'll kind of talk about with the male pelvic health portion of this, and we'll probably dive into this a little bit as well. But another big component that I see, especially with on top of my pelvic health, coursework, I'm also a certified nutritional physical therapist. Nutrition, I think, is a huge part, with what we do and and how we recover and what we fuel our body with. I look at things from a nutrition standpoint very, very simple.

Joe: 11:02

I follow personally an 80 20% rule, 85 15, where 85% of the things you put in your body are are are very good, very whole foods, very dense. And then 15% is just kinda, you know, fill it in as you want. But I compare our bodies to a car. You don't wanna put bad fuel in your engine because it'll run bad. Our bodies are the same way.

Joe: 11:29

You wanna fuel your body with good, whole, dense nutrients. That also applies to public health. Because if our system is having a lot of bladder irritants, for instance, in bladder urgency, caffeine, tea, coffee, energy drinks, carbonated stuff, your body's gonna want to expel that quicker. So focusing on water, electrolyte consumption to let your body absorb some of that water. I think we also need to make sure that we're taking in good whole foods such as a clean protein source, enough carbs that aren't refined, no refined sugar, good whole fats, making sure that our bodies are appropriately fueled and given the nutrients that we need to move well.

Joe: 12:20

Nutrition is so so so important. If you're eating McDonald's every day and only drinking carbonated drinks and caffeine, it's gonna be really tough for the bladder and for your bowels as well. So overall, in summary for the men's public health, podcast here and topic this month, 1, a big overarching theme that I really wanna make sure is really pounded into the ground here is it's not normal to have symptoms. It's not normal to have bladder urgency. It's not normal to have erectile dysfunction.

Joe: 12:53

Not normal to have bowel pain. Not normal to have painful sex. Not normal to have any pelvic pain in general. If you don't get anything else out of this podcast, it is not normal for those symptoms to happen. I wish I would have known this sooner because there's a lot of things in my life that have were changed or altered because of these symptoms I was having.

Joe: 13:16

If I could help one person not go through what I did, that's my goal. 2, make sure we're feeling the body correctly. Good whole foods are super helpful. Super, super helpful. And 3, make sure that we unlock our pelvic mobility, unlock our hip mobility, improve our strength.

Joe: 13:37

That only helps. Working on good mobility and good exercise is so so so important. And, again, for anyone that thinks that they're experiencing symptoms or even a family member that may have symptoms, come see Nina or I here at Fox Point. We'd love to help you. We're we we really, really wanna help.

Joe: 13:55

Nina and I work really well back and forth of really just helping one another because we're the only 2 that speak and teach and work currently with male public health patients. So it's really nice for her and I just to, you know, talk about case examples and and learn from one another. We we really, really, really want to help people and and reach out to a bigger audience. So, again, if anybody has any symptoms or knows anybody that has these symptoms, please don't be afraid to reach out. Now is the best time.

Joe: 14:24

So thanks again everybody for listening to yet another episode of the Freedom Talks podcast. If anybody, is enjoying the podcast or would wanna hear more about it, please let us know. You can either leave a review for us on Apple Podcasts or or Spotify as well as on our Facebook or Instagram pages or tell a friend. Let a therapist know. Any input is great.

Joe: 14:47

We'd love to give you any topic that would help you or topic ideas, moving forward. Our goal is just to, again, spread positivity in the health care world and help people be more knowledgeable of the human body. So thanks again, everybody, and we'll see everybody in a couple weeks at our next episode.