10 Months of Stanford/Wise-Anderson Protocol - My Status

[NoMoPain]

I have been doing the Stanford/Wise-Anderson Protocol for 10 months and have had 21 PT sessions to date. Overall, on average, I would say I am about 85% better. Below is a lengthy summary:

Pain - 95% of the time I have no pain or discomfort or any noticeable tightness. The other 5% time I have minor tightness and discomfort but it is much less intense than how it used to be so I cannot even call this pain.
Even after sex most of the time I do not have any pain or disccomfort--before I started the program I would always have nasty pain after sex.

Urinary - I keep a diary to track how many times each night I get up to urinate. For the last 6 months about 90% of the nights I am only getting up once, most of the other 10% is getting up twice. Maybe a couple times a month I do not even get up once at all to urinate. The last month I have only gotten up once to urinate, so overall I would say I am averaging only once per night to urinate, and most of these nights are about an 8 hout period. Before I started the protocol I averaged between 2 to 4 times per night to get up an urinate. Sometimes during the day I do not urinate for up to 5 or 7 hours. When I do urinate, the stream is generally very strong. So the bottom line is that with the urinary aspect I am better now than I have been for about 14 years (I am 38 years old).


What I have found to be helpful (Mostly described in the Headache in the Pelvis book):

PT sessions

Paradoxical Relaxation Sessions--This is pure pleasure for me

Moment to Moment Relaxation -- Extremely helpful

Heat - helps to relax the muscles

Stretching

Cardio Excercise like swimming or ski machine -- (No biking !! No Weight lifting !! No Situps or any strenuous strengthening !! For reasons described in the AHIP book, trust me I found all this out the hard way as these excercises put a lot of strain on the pelvic floor)

A supplement called "Natural Calm" which helps to alleviate tension and anxiety. Also Melatonin for deeper sleep.

Less Sexual Frequency in the beginning--the first few months I would only have sex about once every week or two but now I am about twice a week and without any pain or tightness afterward. I drop my pelvis muscles during sex and orgasm and the pleasure is so much better now than what it used to be (in my opinion, tight pelvic muscles take a lot of the pleasure out of sex)

Good Comedy

Reminding myself that this is only a tight muscle cause and will get better over time with this treatment.

Claire Davies book about Trigger Points -- Reading this book made me realize that Pelvic pain is just another subset of Myofascial pain in general that can occur in other places in the body and often gets misdiagnosed because the medical profession just has been slow to accept this (although it is ironic how trigger points were discoverd by an MD and trigger points can easily and empirically be shown to exist in the muscles and reproduce symptoms when pressed upon, so this is not just some hocus pocus abstract theory that cannot be verified). For example, people can have painful trigger points that can cause pain in their low backs and then the Doctor thinks it is a slipped disc and performs an unnecessary surgery which does not help if indeed the problem was really due to a trigger point.

Bottom line is that on average I do not carry nearly as much muscle tension in my entire body (not just my pelvic muscles but my shoulders and face too as I used to get very tense in these areas also). I also get very happy when I ponder the fact that the more I practice the skills of paradoxical relaxation, the better I will become at it and thus will reap the rewards in the form of better health and peace of mind.

[scotsman]

Delighted to read you're making such good progress.

With your 85% improvement, is it possible to say how much is down to the PT and how much is the relaxation work? Probably too intertwined but I'd be interested to hear your view.

Richard.

[NoMoPain]

Hi Richard,

I will try to answer your question. Currently, I am only seeing my Physical Therapist about once every 3 weeks. I always feel better and looser in the pelvic floor after she stretches me out, it literally feels like my pelvis is hanging lower and looser as opposed to the up and tight feeling that I have had for the last decade or so. I do the paradoxical relaxation every night before bed and my sleep is much better and I literally feel less tension in all my muscles. But my personal opinion is that the moment to moment relaxation is just as important as the PT and the paradoxical relaxation. Let me give you an example why: as I am going about my day at work there is plenty of opportunity to get stressed out and tense my muscles and stimulate my autonomic nervous system-both of these reactions are detrimental to recovery. So if I can catch myself and drop\relax most of the muscle tension does dissipate and I might save myself a tension headache or some pelvic tightness and some discomfort. Over time, I have gotten more skilled at remaining calm and relaxed in some pretty stressful situations in my work and personal life, and the amount of confidence this brings me is just enormously empowering.


So to sum it up, I give credit out to each aspect as follows:

Physical Therapy 25%
Paradoxical Relaxation 25%
Moment to Moment Relaxation 25%
Miscellaneous 25% --This includes using a heat pack, supplements that I have mentioned, stretching, the right kind of excercise, and some other skills my PT has taught me.

But, one last point regarding your question--in the early part of my treatment I would have to give at least 75% credit to the Physical Therapy aspect simply because I did not have much experience or skill with the other aspects. But I think that this is the whole point of the Stanford/Wise-Anderson Protocol and one of the many reasons I appreciate it greatly is that over time you yourself will have all the skills to heal yourself and remain symptom free as opposed to being dependent on the PT the rest of your life. This protocol is truly a blessing for me and my mission is to help spread the word to other sufferers.

Take Care

[scotsman]

Many thanks for the response - it's helped to kick me into gear on really getting to grips with the relaxation side of the protocol. I've been finding it very difficult to get into the habit of daily relaxation but I hope I've now reached the point where pure frustration at this condition will give me the will-power to stick at it.

Please keep us posted with your continued progress.

Richard.