Episode 37- Pelvic Floor Health with Dr. Amanda Thompson of Rooted Physical Therapy

We're talking a bit differently about health and fitness today with our special guest Dr. Amanda Thompson of Rooted Physical Therapy. Dr. Amanda is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to pelvic floor health and she shares the importance of prioritizing your pelvic floor health for both men and women.

If you've been suffering from back pain, constipation, urinary leakage, or a variety of other symptoms, it's time to get to the root cause of your dysfunction, and it could very well be issues stemming from your pelvic floor!

I was blown away by this conversation and know it will help listeners no matter their age or phase of life!

To learn more about Dr. Amanda Thompson and her services and upcoming courses, check here out on her Instagram or TikTok or visit her website rootedphysicaltherapyllc.com

• Episode 37 Transcript

   because the body is a system, right? So if you are off in one area, like a domino, it's going to affect everything else. So if your nutrition is off, it's going to affect clearly the way you poop and pee, but your nutrition is also going to affect your mindset.

  This is To The Nines Podcast. I am your host, Tiffany Wicks, a mom of seven who doesn't subscribe to the idea that you have to choose between your family and a computer. I am on a mission to show the stay at home mom who has lost herself in childcare and co compelling and the overworked corporate holdout who isn't finding joint purpose in their career that they can work for themselves, making an impact in an income that serves your dreams.

  life. After leaving my nursing career to raise our family, I needed more mental stimulation, but didn't want to give up the privilege of raising our legacy. I've been in network marketing now for five years. I know the strategy and mindset it takes to be successful and to live a life aligned with your values and your purpose.

  Join me as I share my business tips, marketing mistakes, attitude shifts you need to space out some time for you or ditch your nine to five completely and start working for yourself. You have the power to change your life. Let's get started. This

  Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. Happy to have you here and so excited. I have a guest and the guest podcast interviews, I think are always my favorite because it's a little bit more dynamic. It's not just me going on a riff about, you know, how you got to clear up the junk that's happening in between your ears in order to.

  Crush life, um, without, you know, and alongside life crushing you because I figured that's pretty much the standard these days. So speaking of crushing things, um, let's talk about crushing the pelvic floor health. And you know what? Listen, this I have learned recently is not just a female issue. Um, men have a pelvic floor, so I know I have a decent male base, um, that listens to this podcast as well.

  Um, So why are we talking about pelvic health? Um, on a mindset and business podcast? Well, I'm going to tell you why from my perspective. I wanted to have Dr. Amanda come on here and talk about it because if you are not feeling well holistically, so mind, body, spirit, soul, I think that The axes of your productivity and your mindset are going to be tilted if not thrown off altogether if everything happening between your belly button and your knees are not taken care of.

  And we're not even just talking about sexual health, although I think that's a huge part of a person's identity, really. is how healthy they are sexually, but it also covers how you pee and you poop. And I know this much about pelvic health because one of my best friends happens to also be a pelvic health PT.

  Um, and I have gone through a round of pelvic PT when I was pregnant with our sixth baby, and it was one of the best experiences. Um, and really taught me a ton about how to keep that area healthy so that I can thrive in every part of my life. So because our genitals are also important to us and how they function or not, I'm going to turn the mic over to Amanda.

  Dr. Amanda, tell us about yourself, how you came into this practice, and start letting us know all the things. Well, first of all, Tiffany, thank you so much for having me on this podcast. I love your podcast and I love how enthusiastic you are on all of your episodes. Number one, you're real and that's why people listen to you is because you're real about all the topics.

  And my whole goal is to make public health a normal conversation that we talk about on a day to day basis. Will it happen for sure? Maybe, maybe not. So I started my PT training working at a really rural hospital. And when I was working at the hospital, I pretty much stopped everything that came, came in.

  It didn't matter, pediatrics, old people. Literally, head to toe, you name it, I treated it. So it wasn't until I had my own issues, so I had fertility issues with my first, my first baby's actually an IVF baby, a little science project, and when I was going through fertility stuff, I was introduced to the world of public health.

  And I drove about an hour and a half to a public floor therapist, because I was the closest one at the time to my area, and I thought to myself, you know, Well, this is an interesting take on X, Y, and Z, and it was about just different things, specifically fertility. Now, for me, fertility didn't work with pelvic floor PT.

  It does work with some people, but I had a lot more issues that, probably a whole nother context episode. Then when I delivered my baby, my first baby, I realized, number one, I was not very prepared. I read all the books. I actually took a little local birthing class. And I took a, uh, breastfeeding class and after baby, it, nothing went as planned.

  My water broke at 37 weeks. My, I pushed for three hours, active pushing for three hours, and I had a lot of symptoms after my child. So a lot of vulvar swelling. Um, leakage, urinary fecal leakage for a couple, like a week or two afterwards. And I would contact my provider and everybody pretty much blew me off that it was just normal.

  That was what was going to happen and welcome to motherhood. And so within the first couple of weeks, I was like, Oh no, man, this is not, this is not how I want to live the rest of my life. So I started taking courses, I started communicating with my patients, and I tried to solve my own issues. Now, I have a pelvic organ prolapse, it's a grade 3 prolapse, I educate all my patients on it, but it wasn't until COVID hit that I got brave enough to let go of the traditional setting model which is in the hospital.

  So I was working in an outpatient hospital setting doing some pelvic health, but in an outpatient setting I was having to see 3, 4, 5 patients an hour. And in the pee, poop, and sexual dysfunction area, it's really hard to see that many patients at the same time. So I would only get about 10 15 minutes with each patient in a room, while a technician or anybody that was working there could work with my patients.

  So they weren't efficiently and effectively getting what they needed. So I branched out on my own, with a little push of my best friend, she um, told me, you can do this on your own, do it on your own, and it took a lot of effort to leap, like a leap of faith, to be able to just branch out on my own. The big thing that I do, I also love about your podcast, is you're teaching moms that they don't have to, um, stop what they're doing, to continue growing as a human, as a female, and as a man.

  And so, I Really took that to heart when my friend was like, you don't necessarily have to work at the hospital forever. You can show your kids that you can be an entrepreneur, which, by the way, is terrifying. So I lost a lot of time with my kids when they started kindergarten and all the things. So I took a leap of faith and started doing this on my own.

  So I got brave on social media, which is also terrifying. And so I tried to normalize the conversation about pee, poop, and sexual dysfunction. And I always pitch it as everybody pees, everybody poops, and most of us would like to have sex. So, if you're having any issues, then usually one whole lead, one whole issue leads to another whole issue.

  When I talk to physicians, I ask them. How many of your patients have died from sepsis? How many of your patients have died from bowel obstruction? And they look at me like, oh. And so when you put it in, the context is if you are chronically constipated and you get a bowel obstruction, you could die. If you get frequent UTIs and you have a UTI I that gets outta hand, you could go septic and die.

  Then people start listening. So it is a funny topic. My social media is me dancing around in a vulva costume or a poop costume. My kids love to dress in the poop costume. So reality is it's such an important part of our life that nobody wants to normalize the conversation. It is not normal to pee yourself after you have a baby.

  It is not normal for you to have pelvic pain or pain with intercourse, difficulty or pain wearing a tampon. It is not normal for you to poop every few days. It's not normal. So just honestly activating the conversation and making it funny and just stimulating people to ask the questions and normalizing it is.

  My ultimate goal. Okay. Yeah, so I was going to bring up um, And i'm glad that you brought it up is what attracted me to your account was I was like Is this a chick dressed in a vulva? And you guys if you don't know the difference between a vulva and a vagina Then you definitely need a little bit of extra biology help.

  So vagina is internal the vulva is what you see on the outside So yes, she will definitely make the content engaging which is what drew me in originally and you know, I definitely have You know, some bit of context, but when you were talking about, um, your experience with prolapse, that's what brought me to PT.

  Health was not a prolapse, but rather, um, knowing a pelvic floor PT. And she was like, Hey, uh, let's prevent this before it becomes a problem. Like, well, yeah, prevention. Um, you know, what do they say? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So yeah, let's go ahead and talk about that because I mean, I've now pushed just seven babies out.

  And that is a lot of babies traveling through, you know, what it was through the, you know, the vaginal canal, which it's designed to do. But when things are off, um, most importantly, let's talk about, so this is bothersome to me truly. When I see women make reels on Instagram, joking. about, um, coughing or sneezing and then they're like, Oh, I have to cross my legs.

  I'm like, it's not cute and it's not, it doesn't have to be that way. Like you can experience life in a whole new way. Oh, I don't go to a trampoline park with my kids. I don't play with them because I can't jump. I'll end up, you know, peeing on myself or, you know, even doing jump rope because I am a health and fitness coach and we need to jump.

  Jumping is crucial for your mobility, for, you know, extra cardio. I mean, jumping, really, like, what happens if you have to jump to reach something and then you just don't do it anymore? So, nonetheless, these women are foregoing physical fitness, um, even lifting heavy weights, if you're, if you don't learn how to breathe properly, then they pee themselves.

  So, let's talk about, What are the, I'd say top three, um, things that you see in your clinic that are preventing women and men from living their best lives because physically they're off, which is obviously the not peeing correctly, not pooping correctly. Let's talk a little bit about men and ED, um, and about kegel exercises because dudes, you have kegel muscles just like women do.

  And, you know, from my research. You can overdo it, which is going to impact your ability to pee. It'll impact your ability to get an erection. Um, and let's talk about why women, this is a lot to talk about. I know in a very short amount of time, but this topic I think is so vital because your sexual health, your physical health is absolutely going to impact how you show up in the world.

  So ladies, you are telling your husbands, I don't want to have sex tonight. He thinks it's about him, right? But you hurt when you're doing it and let's talk about, um, when you mentioned the other day doctors, which is sort of ironic, given that I also market wine, um, doctors telling women, oh, just have a couple of lines and then plow through your, your sexual endeavor.

  with your husband. And like I said, there's some validity that it could loose. It could like calm you down a little bit if you've had it, but come on, if you have to get a little buzz going and alter your state of mind and try and release muscles to have sex, or maybe just drink so much wine that you don't care that this stuff hurts.

  That's a problem. And I have never seen a single human that isn't better for having an orgasm than the ones who haven't. So Here we go. Topic number one. I just threw like a massive ton of stuff at you. I love it. But let's talk about why women. He's eating my hair. If you, if you guys are watching the recording, I'm holding the baby like I do on most and he is just smiling at me and eating my hair.

  All right. Let's talk first about. Why are women not, first off, what is it that they're going to experience that says, hey, I need help. Okay. Men, what is it that you're experiencing from your women that says, hey, she might need some help. So let's talk about the communication. Let's talk about physical symptoms and talk about how these things, when they are not most optimal are preventing you from showing up in your life, in your business, in your relationship and how it's affecting your mindset.

  So the first thing that I really want to touch on is, unfortunately, by the time people find me, I am years down the road of them trying to seek help and care. So when I was working at the hospital based clinic, most of my clients were of Medicare age. That's just typical in an outpatient clinic. They're mostly the Medicare age.

  And when I started doing public health and started treating women, with, and men with incontinence or constipation or prolapse. These people, women specifically, were telling me that they had been dealing with their symptoms for most of their lives, whether there was a big trigger during, um, postpartum, like right after they had a baby, very traumatic deliveries.

  And most of these people would say, Oh, I've been leaking since I had my kids. And so there was a huge transition in my brain when I realized that these people could have prevented their issues that they're having at 60 and 70 if they would have just known, which it didn't exist, but if they would have known that a pelvic floor therapist can help them prevent their issues whenever they're older.

  So the number one reason people seek me out in my area specifically is actually pelvic pain. Pain with intercourse. pain with tampons, they have a lot of heaviness and pressure, and they cannot participate in intercourse without a lot of pain, and that is, uh, absolutely unfortunate. And they're, they're finding me because mostly, not physician, mostly their friends know somebody that has come to see me in their, in the past.

  And so they're ready. They're at that point where they've been told. I have a lady right now who's made tremendous projects in four sessions, four. She's been experiencing horrendous pelvic pain since 1988 when she had a 12 pound vaginal delivery. Followed by a radical hysterectomy, and then the physician fixed her perineum, aka gave her what was called a benot, back in the day, and literally destroyed her.

  So, after two sessions, the second time she came in, she came in basically crying, because she had never had relief in her back, her butt, or her hips. She's in her 80s, by the way, um, since 1988. That is absurd. I was born in 1985, and so the amount of conversations that I've heard from these women is absolutely appalling.

  My advocates, my patient advocates, are my older population, because like, they are like, I do, I dealt with this issue for so many years, and nobody would listen to me, and I'm the first one that they find. My younger generation is typically willing, wanting to find Help because they have came intercourse and they, the, the 40th, I feel like my age generation, they're in that in-between of, I am not 20 and early thirties, but I'm not 45 and over yet.

  I feel like the 35, well I'm almost 40, but these people that are turning 40 are just a different generation of, I don't want to deal with what my mom and my aunt, my grandma dealt with. I'm trying really hard to fix the issues that I had in my twenties. And I'm trying really hard, more holistically and well rounded to try to address all these issues so that when I'm 60, I can play with my grandkids.

  I can go to trampoline park, be in a better physical shape than my parents and my grandparents were whenever they had children and grandchildren. The number one reason people come see me and my Physical clinic is pelvic pain, pain with intercourse, pain with wearing a tampon, pain with sitting, low back pain, it's all connected.

  The number two reason is leakage. So urinary leakage with coughing, sneezing, running, jumping, making it to the bathroom, that type of thing. And when you put it in perspective of a 45 year old lady comes into the office and they say, I have leakage when I cough or sneeze. Okay, well, what else do you have leakage with?

  And they don't report it. Why? Because they haven't been participating in running, jumping, lifting weights for years because they avoided it so that they Um, wouldn't leak. So you have two ends of the spectrum, people that avoid it and they continue to avoid it, which makes their function and their functional mobility and their actual happiness lower because now the field trips at the trampoline park and they can go, but they have to sit over on the side and or the, you know, bounce houses or even a trampoline at home with your kids and you can't jump because you paint everywhere.

  It is embarrassing and people just Avoid it. So you have the avoidance people, and then you have the people that just don't give a shit. And they're like, I'm going to run and jump. And I'm just going to be everywhere. I'm going to run a marathon and have key running down my leg. And I'm going to lift these heavy, heavy weights.

  And I don't care. Those people are the hardest ones to treat because you have to reign and back in treat the actual problem, which is actually not weakness. It's not Kegels. They don't need Kegels. They're actually too tight. And they need to then ramp back up, but getting them to pull back is really, really hard.

  Well, I would say the athlete mindset too, because most athletes, um, they will, if their shoulder hurts, they don't stop working out shoulders. They'll just put a brace on or, you know, it's like, okay, well, so I pee when I lift, when I do heavy deadlifts, I'll just wear a light days pad. And I'm like. Yeah, no, if it's something's hurting and it doesn't feel well, then that's your indicator to stop.

  In fact, I'm about to post a reel. That's a pretty vulnerable one. I was trying to do a move and I was recording it because that's part of my business, right? It's showing people exercising. So I was trying to do this bear, hold, um, sit through and, uh, you'll know the name of the connection points. I don't write off the top of my head, but they're right.

  attached to the mom's pubis and I was trying to rotate and the, uh, like side to side rotation for me, lateral movements is still, it's still really sensitive. And I was, I was doing that, you see me, I do it and then I stop and then I do it more slowly. And then I stopped the exercise completely. And I said, I can't do this.

  And I'm like grabbing my pubic bone. I said, this is a little too sensitive as I walked to the camera to turn it off. And I thought, well, I'll just delete that. And I thought, you know what? I'm actually not going to delete it. I'm going to put that out for the world to see so they can see like, Hey, yes, I am great in the gym.

  Mostly, but I am still five months postpartum, which means I still need to pay very close attention to my pelvic health for years after having a baby because a I'm still breastfeeding. So those hormones are running thick through your body. The most experience I've got, so the athlete brain that will, that will prevent you from getting the help you need and you'll just stick a bandaid on it and keep plowing through it.

  Don't do that because here's what's going to happen is you're going to end up more hurt. Um, and then requiring so much more intensive care later on. So I can totally see that that being a population that's very difficult to treat because they just want to keep going and progress, progress, progress is how an athlete's brain.

  Is wired. So what, what techniques do you use with them? 'cause I'm guessing it's gonna have to be a little tough, little tough love to get them to pull back. And then next I want you to talk. Do you, do you typically see men? And if you do, what are they coming to you with that says, I need help? Because I'm guessing with urinary stuff, they just immediately go to, uh, a urologist or if they are having some sort of ed issue.

  Well, there's a convenient pill that they can, I'm pretty sure you can even get it over the counter. And if you can't, then it's, you know, no issue at all to slap a pill. And I'm not even sure if that fixes the problem. Thank God we don't have to deal with that. But what do they come to you for? Like with the, um.

  So for the athletes, pulling them back is really the hardest part. If I can catch them while they're pregnant, I can actually usually convince them. of the purpose of rehabbing after a baby is. But I just have to be just as honest as humanly possible. If they're having pressure or leakage now, then when they're 60, their vagina's gonna fall out.

  That's just straight up what I tell them. My girl, your vagina's gonna fall out. And it doesn't actually, but a bladder prolapse or a uterine prolapse or a rectal prolapse can be a very severe thing. And surgery doesn't actually fix the problem, by the way. I see a lot of post op patients, post hysterectomy with a bladder sling failed, post erectocele procedure failed.

  The reason why it fails is because nobody actually fixes the problem. Now I'm going to go down a rabbit hole a little bit and then I want to touch on the men component as well. So the rabbit hole that I go on is if you've never heard the phrase open birth position or as I start calling it as the post birth position, your pelvis is still in the open birth or post birth position.

  If you've never been told that they need to close you out of that position. There are very, very, very few pelvic floor physical therapists that actually treat this. This is an entire world that is missing. It's a missing link. And so when the baby's head descends into the pelvis, the bones actually have to move out of the way.

  The sit bones and the tailbone have to kick out of the way. Even if you have a C section, repeat C sections, you're still going into labor. So your body's still, baby's head is descending, and you're still in that position where baby's head is coming out. So if your sit bones are spread out and your, your tailbone is kicked out, your hammock or your pelvic floor muscles are sagging.

  So everything above is sagging into your pelvic floor muscles. If that's the case, your body rebounds, is a rebound effect, and it tightens your pelvic floor muscles. You get tightness in your muscles. You get compensatory strategies with the way that you sit, stand, walk, pick up your kids, pick up your groceries, the dog food, the, the water that they conveniently place in a weird position at Walmart, um, to be able to drag it forward and then lift it and put it underneath the bottom of your cart.

  All of those things increase pressure in your abdomen. And if you don't close yourself out, then you can't close yourself. You don't get someone to close you out, which I treat virtually. I teach people how to do it correctly. and learn to breathe and coordinate your pelvic floor. Then you're asking for issues when you get old or more stress and pressure.

  So I always describe a second, third or seventh pregnancy. So where you were talking about the lateral pain when you move sideways, likely you're still in the open birth position. When that happens, your pubic bone that is mobile is getting overpowered by your adductor, your inner thigh muscle. And so, yes, we're working on lateral movement and eccentric.

  You're working on concentric and eccentric or lengthening and shortening muscle activation of the inner thigh and the outer thigh. But if you're in an open birth position, then you're not setting yourself up for success for all functional movements. And that will lead to tension in your pelvic floor, tight back or lower hip, butt area.

  In leakage and programs. Okay, you've got a new patient. So hi, I'll start my onboarding process and I'm so not lying about this. Um, because I know I've never heard an open breath position, but I'm like, yep, my hips are super tight and when I'm working on stretching, I'm like, there's, I'm not going to stretch more to try and stretch something out.

  That's tight. That's telling me there's something else going on. So, I mean, he said, not everybody has like the wherewithal and the. Yeah. To, to understand how the body works all together, this comes from my history as being a registered nurse, my history as a health coach, um, and just in health advocate for my, most of my adult life, but I definitely need help and I will be getting some help getting back out of the open birth position because, uh, we no longer need to be open.

  Hello, Roman. Sebastian is here. We don't need to do that anymore. So, Wow. That was an incredible. You definitely described. I don't have any leakage at this point. Um, I did while I was pregnant and I was sick and I was vomiting. I just accepted it. I was like, it's happening. And I pissed all over myself or while I was vomiting and coughing.

  And I was like, this is just going to be the way it is right now. However. I mean, no doubt I need a little bit of intensive therapy again with my pelvic floor. I did an entire postnatal program that started just hours after I delivered about lying down and, you know, learning how to breathe. And I'm not entirely sure I did it.

  Perfectly, but I am definitely going to seek help and please, you know, if you're a person listening to this and you're like, well, I had my baby a year ago. I don't need it. Yeah, you do. You do. If you didn't get help, you absolutely still need to see pelvic floor PT and thank you. Goodness, you guys can treat this stuff virtually.

  So it's not like you have to go in and I know that sometimes being in person, you guys have tools that look a little pornographic and you're like, you're going to put that where, but it's not always required to have internal manipulation. There's a lot of things that we can do on our own. There's so many muscles down there that can get tight just like a bicep and need to be strengthened just like your triceps.

  I mean all kinds of stuff happening down there. So definitely follow along. So let me talk, talk to me a little bit about the men and what do they come to you for? And what are some things that you have now resigned as normal because it's just been going on so long, but just because it's happening doesn't make it normal.

  It's just happened so long that you have no idea that that's a complete dysfunction of your entire, you know, genital uric system. So go ahead. Talk to me about the do. The men I treat in person tend to be, because of where I'm at, I'm in a rural area of Texas, and most of the men come to see me because they typically have chronic constipation, they're referred by a GI doctor, and they also have urinary leakage.

  like a prostatectomy, which is where the prostate is removed, usually from cancer. I also will get some that are post prostectomy, post radiation. So they've had either like a front or back or both radiation treatment, which affects their colon. Um, and then I do get some men that are pelvic pain. Where I'm located, I, I niche to women on my website, but I definitely am one of the only ones in my area that treatment.

  And by golly, my men are the most compliant patients I've ever had because They are here to see me. They know that they are desperate for help and by golly, they will do everything to fix it, including my men. I don't get very many young, but I have a few men that are here for pain with erection or pain with ejaculation.

  No, I didn't even know that was a thing. So, in PT school, so if you were to look at the sacrum, I don't know if you have this on, um, video, you're, you're recording the video too, but I, I love having my pelvic model. But, if you were to Google the sacrum, S2, 3, and 4, keep it off the floor. So your sacral nerves, which connect with some of your lumbar nerves, which is what makes the sciatic nerve have branches that dive deep into these hips that dive into the pelvic floor and S234 keeps it off the floor.

  It's responsible for erection and ejaculation. If you have my quote unquote butt tuckers, where their butt is nice and tucked in, if you have my upper ab grippers, which is men or women. Where my butt is tucked. And if you think about an, think about an old man, but also think about our gamers, the 20 ish year olds that are sitting in those gaming chairs, by the way, where they're nice and rounded.

  And then they stand up and they're nice and stiff. Their butts are so tucked under that they don't actually have a disc problem. They have a, their butt is too tight. Their levator ani, which elevates the anus is too tight. What's happening is it's compressing on all the nerves that popped out. The pudendal nerve is a funny name.

  Somebody made, somebody laughed at me yesterday about it. The pudendal nerve is a branch of the sciatic nerve. And the pudendal nerve is responsible for the motor, the sensory of the downstairs muscles. And then there's a branch to the abdomen. So my chronic constipators, my pain with erection and ejaculation, and it's pain.

  Like, like when I'm saying pain, men come in and they're, if they have pain with an erection or ejaculation, by golly, they'll let me do anything. They will do anything I ask them to do because they want results. So they typically will seek out, especially men with pelvic pain in my area, they will seek out chiropractic care.

  They will go to any physician that will listen to them and usually I, so I've had, I'm going to give you an example of one man who was 22 or 24, seven providers, including a chiropractor they saw for two years with no relief. Why he kept seeing the chiropractor, I don't know. No relief, no change in symptoms and the only result that they gave them.

  gave him, was a pain stimulator in his back. Insert and put a pain stimulator in his back so that he could have, the dude's 24 years old. Are you kidding? So he found me from his chiropractor. He asked her, is there anybody else that you can, that can help me? So she sent him here. Girl, two sessions. Two. This man was able to have no more pain.

  Whoa, that's amazing. So is it a requirement that you have to see guys in office? No, but I do a lot of manual things. So I do have to, so no, it depends. So I will typically, if I see somebody virtually, I give them the low down on everything. The trick solvent for therapy, it's not to back up a little bit, regardless of who I'm seeing, whether I'm seeing them for shoulder pain, because they walked in my door and they've seen me in the I've been in my area for 10 years.

  They're like, I only want to see Dr. Amanda because I treated, she treated me a long time ago or they're here for something very specific that might be on my website. I don't look at a body part as a body part. If they're here for their shoulder or their neck, I'm looking at them from head to toe in sitting and standing, lying down, and then I'm going to watch them squat, stand on one leg, walk, go up and down stairs, get in and out of their car.

  My reel today is about getting in and out of the car today, but, um. If your provider is only looking at you in one or two positions and not looking at your functional mobility, even virtually, that's how I can really make an impact. Yes, some of the things are basic, basic, basic exercises. But if your mechanics aren't optimal for you, you're now changing.

  status, whether it's postpartum or post surgery or these post prospectomies have been compensating the way that they see in four years because they've had an increase in that PSA where their prostate is getting larger and larger and larger and kinking off the urethra. So they haven't had to work those muscles in years.

  They don't even realize what a full bladder is because they have urinary retention issues and they have overflow issues and they have so many issues they don't even realize are there. Thanks. And so if your provider is not looking at the whole picture, then you need to find a new provider. That's just simple.

  Um, and I should say it goes in the same with physicians. But physicians, in one aspect, yes and no. But if I'm going to have shoulder surgery, by golly, I want somebody that does shoulder surgery every single freaking day. Not somebody that does other body parts here and there. Like you want your specialist.

  And so, but most of us that are trained in physical therapy school, you have your checklist. You have my, if they present like X, you go down X rabbit hole. If you present like Y, you go down rabbit hole Y. And if you present like C, you go down rabbit hole C. What makes the better therapist than just going down the rabbit hole is going like, Huh, you should have had change in one session and you're not.

  Okay, let's go down this other avenue. Let's go down this other avenue. I've been in the world so long that I can look at somebody. It usually takes me two sessions to really get the full picture of what the plan will look like. But I want to know everything, even if you think it's not connected, because likely it is.

  And if I fix one problem, then I'm doing you a disservice. You need, I need to look at your nutritional intake, your water intake. I need to look at your sleep. I need to look at your stress management. I need to look at your function. What are you doing in reality? What's your life look like? Your life, you have seven children.

  Your life looks different than mine. You posted this morning on your stories about your kids starting to work. I'm in a phase of minor in elementary school. There's going to be listeners with high school age or grown up kids. There's going to be listeners that have newborns at home. And so, each person truly has a different phase of life.

  And you have to, I have to implement myself in that. And that phase of life to better their function for the long haul, the people that don't want to fix the issue, just want to fix it when it's an issue or have surgery or whatever. But if you, if just like your friend said, if you can, if I can say, come see me and you will prevent all of these issues, there's a point where it's exercise app or a fitness app or, you know, personal trainers, I'm really trying hard to get certified to get personal trainers and some CEU courses and PT CEU courses.

  But if you can prevent all of these things happening and really optimize your function, why not? That's the generation I feel like we're at. We're like, why not? Some people are, some people aren't. So going back to the male component, there's a whole separate world of physical therapists in every avenue for men and women's pelvic health.

  There are some people niched so far deep into only one type of patient. So whether they're females, female leakage or crossfit, and that's literally all they see. I'm in a rural area. I treat pediatrics with constipation. By the way, babies should be pooping. The rest of the babies are a little bit different, but if you're a 5 year old, 6 year old, 8 year old, still wetting the bed, that type of stuff, those are so easy for me to treat virtually.

  Why is it so easy? Because I've been doing it for so long. I've been, I've seen it all. I've heard all the things. So instead of figuring it out, I just cut right to the chase. If you plan A, B, and C all at once, you implement, and then we come back and we revisit the conversation. That is amazing. Now, and when you were talking about evaluating on all kind of different, um, different ways, I mean, it's because the body is a system, right?

  So, if. You are off in one area like a domino. It's going to affect everything else. So if your nutrition is off, it's going to affect clearly the way you poop and pee, but your nutrition is also going to affect your mindset. So here's my tiny little rabbit hole. When parents start feeding their kids, um, breakfast that includes yellow dye and red dye 40.

  Well, guess what? That's going to impact your cognitive abilities. It's going to impact your behavioral. So then, you know, kids go put, your parents go putting their kids on drugs for ADD or ADHD, but it's like, okay, but you gave them a bowl of tricks. Is that even a cereal? Lucky charms. First thing this morning, can we at least try feeding them whole foods?

  Make them an omelet, make them something that doesn't have dyes, added sugars and chemicals in it. And let's just. See, gee whiz, but before we start throwing pharmaceuticals and unnecessary surgical procedures at people, how about we just see what sort of impact that makes. And I think physical therapy is, oh my gosh, it's so underrepresented, especially in the medical field.

  And when people start diving into how they show up in their life, physical therapy is not typically what they think. They think physical therapy comes. after you see the physician, not before. And I personally think it has to be one of your first steps is to see a physical therapist before you go to an operating table.

  That should be your last resort, right? I worked on rehabbing my torn rotator cuff for eight months with physical therapy and strength training before I actually got an MRI to see like, Oh, well, actually it's way too torn. It's, it's that kind of on its own. And then I went and got surgery and then guess what I had afterward.

  Physical therapy to learn how to rehab now my shoulder. And by the way, my right shoulder works beautifully. My left, well, we might need to consult on that as well. Uh, but nonetheless, you are such an incredible wealth of knowledge. I honestly did not expect as much to just come flowing. So freely out of your beautiful brain as it did today.

  I kind of thought like oh This will be a three topic thing that I might have to pull some stuff out of but my gosh I don't even think we touched on a fraction of what you side of your head Regarding how to optimize your performance in life starting with your entire physical body, right? Because this is your body is not a machine folks.

  It is it is delicate but it is also resilient So I need to know well, I know but let the people know let all my people know where do they find you? And what sort of stuff do you have coming up because you are about to make physical therapy Um, for your pelvic health and in your particular area, all of it, but more specifically, um, pelvic health, so much more accessible to people, let them know what's going on with you.

  So my entire goal is to broadcast that normalizing the conversation and access to care. And so I, my Instagram is kind of where I, I hold out. Most of my stuff, which is connected to my, my face. So rooted physical therapy, one word is my Instagram, Facebook, and Tik TOK, which makes it nice and easy. Take talk, um, all the, all the shared content.

  I try to do the duets with some people similar to what you talked about, where they're paying themselves with running and jumping, and I try to do it and tell them that it's not okay, but rooted physical therapy, R O T E D physical therapy, all one word and. And my YouTube channel, you can just search Dr.

  Amanda Thompson, PT, and I have a YouTube channel, and I'm trying to get a lot of free content and information out, that way it's easily accessible and searching. And so what I've tried to do is just be different. So what is not out there? What's, what are people not talking about? So, what my people have been screaming for is this first round of things that are coming out.

  And so. I have developed a book, and the book is called What Your PT Wants You To Know About Postpartum Care. This is going to be the first of a series of books, but it's truly everything that I, as a PT, want you to know about postpartum. There is going to be six weeks of post birth exercises, but a step by step process to get to those exercises.

  So it's not a fitness guide, it's everything. People that are pregnant Need it, people that are freshly postpartum, even people that are not, um, freshly postpartum a year or two out would benefit from this because then it's going to flow into a another book which is going to be what your PT wants you to know about post postpartum return to exercise.

  I'm going to do one about childbirth, I'm going to do one about returning to sex after baby. There's going to be an entire series of things that I'm going to be adding. What I want to know from the public is what is their priority. So for my patients here, I have a hard time getting them to come back except for that first visit postpartum.

  Because I see them while they're pregnant, I get them out of that post birth position. And then I give them the breathing techniques and all the things. But it's a, it's a guidebook. So there's checkboxes. There's talking about water and nutrition. There's recipes. There's QR codes to different YouTube videos.

  There's products in there. And then it will, it will guide you through the first six weeks of an actual exercise guide at the end. And so then, I'm developing that into a course. So some people are readable people, some people want audio visual, and so I decided to develop that into a course. So I'll do a bundle, where in each book we'll have a course.

  So, you can either buy the book, or the guide, that can be shipped to you, PDF form, or you can do a Course, or you can bundle it and do both. I'm all in one person. Like I like, I like the hand, but I can't learn anything on a PDF form on my computer. I can't highlight it, write it, but I love audio visual so I can listen to it while I'm doing other things.

  And if I need to go back or look at it in my booklet, then I'll be able to, then I'm also going to be developing right now, I'm developing a course for my goal is personal trainers, fitness people, and PT's, OTs as well. And it's, what I'm trying to do is bridge the gap between personal training and physical therapy for pelvic floor specifically.

  So, fitness, and you can touch on this, fitness is, that's my patient's end goal. But if you have a baby and you go straight into a personal trainer, As good as they are, they likely, even big, big ones, which I'm going to wrap on a few of them, but like Brianna Battles, who's a whole postpartum session, or section where she teaches people how to do fitness stuff postpartum, but it does not entail the open birth position, pelvic floor tension.

  It does incorporate breathing. It incorporates pelvic floor contraction and strengthening while you do it, but if you don't do these first two steps, You're missing a huge link that's going to continue all these other things. So I want to bridge the gap because I feel like in some areas, especially where I live, there's a huge gap and people automatically want to go to a chiropractor, automatically want to go to a personal trainer after birth, and most of it's due to finances.

  They cost more money than a personal trainer. I cost more money than a chiropractor. I will spend one full hour with you and I'm going to go over every single thing that's your complaint. The biggest thing that we didn't touch on, which we probably need to do another episode. It's a shame blame game that comes along with all the symptoms that go along with my patients, men or women, that are affected with their issues.

  So I spend a lot of time consulting with my patients, getting onto a deep personal level. So it's more than just throwing exercises at them. It's more than me manhandling their bellies and their back and dry needling or whatever that is. Which may be needed, but it's so much more than that, and if we can bridge the gap between, especially postpartum, but anybody, between my dysfunction, fix my dysfunction, and move, move the tail all the way to the personal trainer, I want that personal trainer or fitness group instructor to be so educated that when that patient backtracks a little bit or has another baby, you need to go back and see X, Y, and Z people And then come back to me, and that's my goal.

  I want my patients to be done with me, never see me again unless they have a new episode or issue, and continue on their wealth of wellness because they're gonna have all the tools in their tool box. Well, and everybody is most optimal when they are staying in their own lane, really, and being able to provide value where they're at.

  Like, I know enough about pelvic floor stuff to say, I can't help you. Right. And I think you know enough about physical training to say, I'm girl, I'm not the one to show you how to work those biceps and how to do that squat properly. Let me refer you somewhere else. And the gap doctors, they know enough. I almost said nutrition, but that would be a bold face lie.

  They know about nutrition. Um, other than like, Oh yeah. Okay. Eat it. And then if it, okay. Rabbit trail, you've got to get to patients. So amazing, amazing stuff. And I think this, uh, this course, you want to have like a lifetime access course so that when they're in a new phase of life, they just go back to the library.

  That's constantly updated. Like that would be pretty dope for somebody who's young is like, okay, I just had a baby. I've got lifetime access to Dr. Amanda and all the different tutorials, um, and guides and books and videos that you're going to put out that pretty much will address every age stage dilemma, um, that you have in your entire, you know, God willing.

  Full lifespan, because there's going to be so many different opportunities where you're going to have to dive back in and say, okay, my body is not what it used to be and recognizing when something is off is going to be the first key to getting it turned back on. So you can show up happy, confident, healthy, and be able to make the impact that you originally started with.

  But if your body's off, your head's off, your spirit is off, your message is going to be off too. And guess what's going to happen to your audience. They're gonna be out and off as well. So yeah, a hundred percent. To live your best life, please pay attention to your body. Pay attention to your health. Get help when you need it.

  If you wanna connect with Dr. Amanda, there's Instagram, there's TikTok, there's Facebook, there's YouTube. Um, we'll put all of her information on how you're gonna contact her and the website in the show notes. Yes. Dr. Amanda, thank you so much for being here. I am so grateful. Thank you so much. Just it turned me on to the idea like I actually need some help right now.

  So, um, I will Get my email address to you. You can get the patient paperwork to me But I need to close off my open position because I am I am it's closed or it is open I am no longer open but I can feel and now Yes, I would love to know from your audience what things they are struggling with, what they want to hear more about because there's a whole world of like, I'm in perimenopause, perimenopause and menopause and trying to optimize our health and function and for that.

  So literally any topic that is a question mark in your brain, I want your audience to ask you more so we can. Even dive even deeper, maybe even niche down an episode in the future, where we can really hone in on some of those questions that people want to know about. For sure. Every, I think everything that ends with a solution starts with a question.

  And I'm always saying on my social media channels, start asking better questions. So there you go. Ask away, folks. All right. Thanks so much for being here and we'll chat soon. Thank you. Cheers.