Uterine Prolapse
Uterine prolapse is difficult for many women to hear or think about. However this topic is of utmost importance and was my main inspiration for creating public talks and short education seminars. Many areas of a woman’s life are impacted when she suffers from prolapse. More importantly, many prolapses can be easily prevented, halted, and/or corrected with a little knowledge and support. It is important to take preventative measures and to act quickly to speed up healing if faced with a prolapse.
Uterine Massage
There is help - a prolapsed uterus can be corrected by Maya abdominal massage. This external, noninvasive massage strengthens the ligaments and muscles that support the uterus and ovaries. It can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few months to get the uterus to slide back into place.
Stages of uterine prolapse. For educational purposes only.
There are many “old wives tales” and other superstitious beliefs around the world that actually help safeguard a woman’s pelvis. Let’s dive deep into this uncomfortable topic that becomes even more uncomfortable if if you are affected by uterine prolapse.
Prolapse is defined as the falling forward or down of an internal organ. Usually this is in reference to either the bladder, colon, uterus, or some combination of falling forward or down of one or more of these organs. However, it is most commonly used in reference to the uterus, and for simplicity, this will be the organ prolapse this article focuses on.
A man who attended one of my early short seminars almost fainted after finally understanding this very topic. He told me “first time in my life, I understood what my mother went through after birthing me. She struggled with this until she passed away.” This man in that moment had so much more compassion for his mother. Truth be told, I didn’t know this could happen to a woman’s body either until it started showing up in my clinic right shortly after graduation from my Arvigo® Professional Care Training. I could relate to this man because I had felt equally traumatized early on helping my female clients. I used to want to weep for them as I felt so moved and sad to hear their stories and struggles.
Pause when reading this newsletter, take deep breaths, stay centered in your heart, and let’s understand this topic with the intention to prevent or heal it. Look at the image above top left. This is a healthy uterus and where we want it inside the body. Ideally, a uterus is suspended by its many ligaments to be ‘sandwiched' between the colon and bladder and sit perfectly in the center of one’s hips, slightly tilted over the bladder. With life, heavy lifting, gravity, and most commonly with childbirth, the image top right and just below shows what can start to happen to the uterus.
There are four stages of uterine prolapse. They are numbered from least severe to most from 1 to 4. The image above shows where the uterus is during each stage of prolapse and how doctors label the different stages. Again this is for a uterine prolapse only. Note stage 1, the mildest stage of uterine prolapse, is not shown.
Stages of Prolapse:
Stage 1: When the uterus has dropped just a tiny bit into the vaginal canal. Some women may not notice any symptoms at all. If a woman is sensitive or very in tune with her body she may notice a slight heaviness in the pelvic area and some pain. This is the most common symptom. Other women may feel an unpleasant ‘falling out’ feeling in the pelvic region, fearing something may literally fall out, though in this stage of prolapse, the uterus is still high inside the vaginal cavity.
Stage 2: The uterus has shifted down the vaginal canal about half-way down inside the vaginal canal. Most women will notice the above listed symptoms with more severity and discomfort. If the woman has a sexual partner, he or she will most certainly notice things are different. However, it’s important to note almost all the women I have seen in my clinic for a stage 2 or more advanced prolapse didn’t have a sexual partner or active intimate relations, and so the condition goes “unnoticed”. In either case of having a sexual partner or not, it’s very important to stay connected to one’s body so one is in tune or takes notice of any changes.
Stage 3: The uterus has dropped all the way down to the very entrance of a woman’s vagina and is at the labia. ‘Something’ (the cervix of the uterus), is described as being present if the woman takes a look, and may even poke out a little, however, the uterus is still mostly inside the body. A stage 3 uterus is harder to correct by holistic means and may not be correctable. If the uterus position can be fixed without surgery (some women are able to correct this without surgical intervention) this will be a longer, healing journey and will take diligence on the woman’s part and support. Even with effort, some of these stage 3 uterine prolapse women will not be able to completely correct this kind of prolapse. While other women will be able to correct, only partially, this kind of prolapse, getting a stage 3 to go back to a stage 2 or stage 1 prolapse. Other women will be able to manage their prolapse and choose to live with this stage prolapse, while others will require surgery to completely correct a stage 3 prolapse. Whether a woman can correct this kind of prolapse depends on her habits and unique constitution. It is really important that women address any of the earlier stages of prolapse immediately, as prolapses rarely fix themselves and often the uterus continues to travel down south with time and gravity, if left unaddressed.
I see these more advanced stages of prolapse, in my clinic often and I feel sad that these women didn’t have the care or information they needed sooner to prevent, halt, or correct this condition sooner. I feel this information is so important to get out more so women know they do have choices and options and don’t simply have to 'live with' this condition.
Stage 4: This stage is the most severe. This is when the uterus has moved completely outside of the body. It is most likely to happen after a long and difficult labour. If a woman has an experienced and competent midwife and/or doctor, who knows to put the uterus back inside the woman’s body within the few short minutes post-labour, it is possible to save the uterus without surgery. Again, there are only a few short minutes post-birth, while the body is still open, to correct this type of prolapse, so ask your doctor or midwife prior to a birth to see if he or she has this skill set and knowledge. I’ve been told by experienced midwives this kind of prolapse is actually not terribly hard to place back inside the body. However, if the short time window (maybe 5 minutes) is missed to put the uterus back into the body, then surgery or complete hysterectomy is the only means to correct this condition or the woman is left to live with a uterus outside of her body.
Post Labour Prolapse:
The most common time a woman will experience prolapse is immediately after childbirth. It doesn’t matter how young or old she is. Even a caesarian birth can lead to prolapse because the uterine ligaments are still stretched during the growth of a baby and the baby being pulled out, often with great force by doctors. Note, I’ve also treated patients who have suffered prolapse from particularly forceful and insensitive doctors doing routine pelvic exams and biopsies – the pelvis and uterus should always be treated with respect by you and others! No exceptions!
A mild, prolapse is considered normal immediately after labour. This said, right after labour and the following 1-3 months post-delivery are when a woman will be most successful in healing her body or most susceptible to sustaining or worsening a prolapse later on. It is very important to have the right care, take time to rest and recover the body, and eat healthily (warm, nourishing soups and foods- think bone broths). With the proper care and rest many prolapses self-correct. So women, please take the social pressures away to be “super woman” right after a birth. You are super woman enough to have grown and birthed a baby.
If a woman has a caesarian birth, she needs even more time to recover, as a caesarian is a major surgery. A vaginal birth is a natural phenomena that the body was designed to go through and the body knows how to heal from.
Too Much Heavy Lifting Prolapse:
Another common cause of prolapse is too much heavy lifting. This is especially true of woman that have just given birth. Post-vaginal birth, it is advisable that for the first month after delivery, a woman not lift anything heavier than her baby. Post-caesarian, even a woman’s baby maybe too heavy for her body to lift safely and heal well for a few weeks after surgery. This advice comes directly from Tami Lynn Kent, a women’s pelvic physiotherapist specialist based near Portland,Oregon, USA. Tami has worked on thousands of woman. Be mindful of lifting any thing heavy at other times, especially the time just before and during menstruation.
Doing Heavy Lifting Just Before During Your Period, Especially Over Time Can Weaken and Stretch the Uterine Ligaments:
During menstruation the uterus doubles in size, on average from 113 g to 227 g. The ligaments are under extra strain and the act of lifting, heavy or light objects, involves a bearing down/extra pressure on the uterus and thus ligaments. The physics of load and load bearing, such as lifting your groceries, young children, or a suitcase is dynamic. It’s not simply the weight you are picking up, but it is the motion and physical angle of load that almost always make an object heavier than it is when not motion.
For example, I used to do aerial arts as a hobby and took a rigging class. I was hooked up to a machine that could measure the ‘load’ I was generating on circus equipment when I climbed or did drops. When I climbed the aerial silks I generated an extra 13.6 kg to 18 kg in addition to my normal body weight, and this was simply because I was in motion and the rigging point of the fabric had motion and so did the stretchy fabrics I climbed. The extra force of me pulling myself up and moving was making me much heavier and registering much heavier on the scales. This force was dramatically amplified with intentional falls and drops. With the performance falls and drops I could generate several extra 100 kg of weight on the rigging point. Astonishing!
Think of your ligaments attached to the uterus and hip bones as rigging points inside the body. When the uterus is bigger (during menstruation or pregnancy) the ligaments, like my aerial silks, are under more strain. When we add movement like picking things up or putting them down, it’s much more weight than the object by itself. There are also all the kilos of organs sitting above the pelvic floor and the force of the motion!
Cultures Around the World Had Customs to Safe Guard Reproductive Aged Woman's Body:
I believe this is one reason why many cultures around the world preferred their women to not lift or work during menstruation. To have women rest during this time was a smart cultural invention to safeguard the reproductive-aged women’s bodies to be able to bear offspring during times when there wasn’t as much technology to assist when fertility issues arose. This practice would have helped to safeguard the tribe and its future generations.
Cold Can Set Us Up For Prolapse:
Another culprit to uterine prolapse is cold. Not as commonly recognized and not studied in a ‘peer reviewed’ way, cultures around the world recognized that the introduction of cold to a women’s pelvis slowed healing and may have set her up for prolapse related issues whether it be piles (hemorrhoids), hernias, or any other form of organ prolapse be it bladder, colon or uterine. Cultures around the world often taught the following to its young people, especially girls:
Don’t sit on cold floors
Don’t go out in the cold with wet hair
Don’t walk on cold floors
Keep woman’s pelvis warm, especially after child birth
The Maya people as and the ancient Chinese observed that woman who walk around on cold floors or on wet cold grass were more likely to have pelvic issues such as prolapse. Both cultures found a major meridian point on the feet that goes straight to the pelvic area; a gateway, so to speak, to allow cold to enter and weaken this part of the body. Some cultures even called this ‘cold invasion’.
The Modern Day Epidemic of Prolapse:
There seems to be an epidemic of prolapse in Western societies in modern times. I’ve been made aware women are given ice to “numb’ the vagina post birth. Holistic women practitioners that have been practicing before ice was introduced as part of birth are confirming more “prolapse” is happening during their lifetime or from when they first started practicing. Some of them blame ice. I cannot refer to peer-reviewed studies, however I can present anecdotal evidence. I have talked to women that have had births with and without ice who testify that having had no ice for some births and ice for others, that the times when no ice was used was when they healed faster and stronger with fewer complications. Again it’s not “officially tested” but I do feel there are enough stories for hundreds if not thousands of years to warrant a deep consideration to these beliefs around cold being bad for a woman’s body especially in regards to her reproduction and related body parts.
On the topic of cold, another contributing factor to prolapse and even poor digestive health, could be the introduction of cold foods to our diet on a regular basis with the invention of refrigeration. It seems to be a conundrum as refrigeration has certainly curved the deaths and illness by food spoilage and food poisoning, however, the Maya high priest healer Don Elijio Panti, whom Dr. Rosita Arvigo studied with until his death, noted that much more sickness began to show up after the invention of refrigeration. Don Elijio Panti was born in the late 1800’s before refrigerators were common household appliances. Similar to the effects of sitting on cold, eating cold foods, can have a similar effect on bodies, male or female.
Cultures in diverse places such as Russia, India, Asia, and South America all teach that piles can occur from sitting on cold floors. There may not be hard science backing this up yet, but there is also no financial incentive to study this, so we probably won’t see any studies anytime soon. Science that has finally studied acupuncture, massage and chiropractic care now confirm health benefits from these practices, which people have known about for thousands of years before science caught up. I believe our understanding of cold will be on a similar trajectory as acupuncture. Until science catches up, I suggest you keep warm and dry, especially those of us living in cooler climates and follow the advice of older practitioners and some wise traditions that have been in the field a long time. Keep your feet, hips, kidney area, neck and heads protected from cold situations and take care to limit the intake of cold food and beverage to protect youe bodies now and into the future and for the future generations to come.
Having Adequate Nutritional Support to Literally Help the Body Keep Everything Up:
Another topic for prolapse prevention, and this topic can be a bit touchy for some, is diet and nutrient intake. For reproductive aged woman and especially those that wish to become pregnant now or in the future, I cannot ethically recommend a long-term vegan diet. This will have to be a separate newsletter for more in depth, but cultures around the world often had sacred foods for the mothers and fathers to be to start before conception and certainly for the mother to consume during pregnancy and after. Where animal products were available these foods were almost always animal based, whether liver, eggs, sacred butters (harvested at a special time of year), or other organ meats or bone broths. For a comprehensive list check out Westin A. Prices’s list of Sacred Fertility Foods.
The nutrients in these foods is very important for women’s pelvic health, helping to not only grow a strong healthy baby but to keep the ligaments of the uterus strong and the pelvic floor working as it was intended, keeping everything up and inside the body. People do not regularly consume many of the foods for keeping uterine ligaments strong on a regular basis anymore. Namely, bone broth soups. If you aren’t into bone broth soups, and you want to correct a prolapse or make sure things are kept strong I recommend Hydrolysate Collagen. This is the instant building blocks for the ligaments and it’s like eating a super concentrated bone broth soup or several bowls of soup at once. When added to my foods such as a room temperature, ice free smoothy or to a soup, I don’t taste it, and quite enjoy the thicker, creamier texture it imparts.
Self-care for Prolapse
Now that we’ve covered the causes of prolapse, here is what to do to start to correct one that is present. Some of these you can do on your own and others it would be good to see an experienced practitioner.
Hopefully this information helps to start the conversation and attitude among women to take extra special care of their hips and pelvic space. After all, don't many woman take care of their faces and their facial beauty? Should we give the same adoration of our pelvic floors and wombs that work so hard for us?
As women, we are blessed with the ability to birth new life, but with this blessing comes the extra responsibility to take care of our pelvis and the related organs. It's like having an owner's manual for a woman's body. Woman's bodies are different and require a little extra care of the pelvic region. A bigger pelvic outlet for the ability to birth babies, and all those uterine ligaments that allow our uterus to grow and expand, as nature intended, means women are more susceptible to particular health challenges such as prolapse. This is especially true when we don’t take care of our bodies correctly. Remember prolapse is often preventable and can be easily corrected, in most cases, when caught and treated correctly early. Don't wait!
Prolapse is defined as the falling forward or down of an internal organ. Usually this is in reference to either the bladder, colon, uterus, or some combination of falling forward or down of one or more of these organs. However, it is most commonly used in reference to the uterus, and for simplicity, this will be the organ prolapse this article focuses on.
A man who attended one of my early short seminars almost fainted after finally understanding this very topic. He told me “first time in my life, I understood what my mother went through after birthing me. She struggled with this until she passed away.” This man in that moment had so much more compassion for his mother. Truth be told, I didn’t know this could happen to a woman’s body either until it started showing up in my clinic right shortly after graduation from my Arvigo® Professional Care Training. I could relate to this man because I had felt equally traumatized early on helping my female clients. I used to want to weep for them as I felt so moved and sad to hear their stories and struggles.
Pause when reading this newsletter, take deep breaths, stay centered in your heart, and let’s understand this topic with the intention to prevent or heal it. Look at the image above top left. This is a healthy uterus and where we want it inside the body. Ideally, a uterus is suspended by its many ligaments to be ‘sandwiched' between the colon and bladder and sit perfectly in the center of one’s hips, slightly tilted over the bladder. With life, heavy lifting, gravity, and most commonly with childbirth, the image top right and just below shows what can start to happen to the uterus.
There are four stages of uterine prolapse. They are numbered from least severe to most from 1 to 4. The image above shows where the uterus is during each stage of prolapse and how doctors label the different stages. Again this is for a uterine prolapse only. Note stage 1, the mildest stage of uterine prolapse, is not shown.
Stages of Prolapse:
Stage 1: When the uterus has dropped just a tiny bit into the vaginal canal. Some women may not notice any symptoms at all. If a woman is sensitive or very in tune with her body she may notice a slight heaviness in the pelvic area and some pain. This is the most common symptom. Other women may feel an unpleasant ‘falling out’ feeling in the pelvic region, fearing something may literally fall out, though in this stage of prolapse, the uterus is still high inside the vaginal cavity.
Stage 2: The uterus has shifted down the vaginal canal about half-way down inside the vaginal canal. Most women will notice the above listed symptoms with more severity and discomfort. If the woman has a sexual partner, he or she will most certainly notice things are different. However, it’s important to note almost all the women I have seen in my clinic for a stage 2 or more advanced prolapse didn’t have a sexual partner or active intimate relations, and so the condition goes “unnoticed”. In either case of having a sexual partner or not, it’s very important to stay connected to one’s body so one is in tune or takes notice of any changes.
Stage 3: The uterus has dropped all the way down to the very entrance of a woman’s vagina and is at the labia. ‘Something’ (the cervix of the uterus), is described as being present if the woman takes a look, and may even poke out a little, however, the uterus is still mostly inside the body. A stage 3 uterus is harder to correct by holistic means and may not be correctable. If the uterus position can be fixed without surgery (some women are able to correct this without surgical intervention) this will be a longer, healing journey and will take diligence on the woman’s part and support. Even with effort, some of these stage 3 uterine prolapse women will not be able to completely correct this kind of prolapse. While other women will be able to correct, only partially, this kind of prolapse, getting a stage 3 to go back to a stage 2 or stage 1 prolapse. Other women will be able to manage their prolapse and choose to live with this stage prolapse, while others will require surgery to completely correct a stage 3 prolapse. Whether a woman can correct this kind of prolapse depends on her habits and unique constitution. It is really important that women address any of the earlier stages of prolapse immediately, as prolapses rarely fix themselves and often the uterus continues to travel down south with time and gravity, if left unaddressed.
I see these more advanced stages of prolapse, in my clinic often and I feel sad that these women didn’t have the care or information they needed sooner to prevent, halt, or correct this condition sooner. I feel this information is so important to get out more so women know they do have choices and options and don’t simply have to 'live with' this condition.
Stage 4: This stage is the most severe. This is when the uterus has moved completely outside of the body. It is most likely to happen after a long and difficult labour. If a woman has an experienced and competent midwife and/or doctor, who knows to put the uterus back inside the woman’s body within the few short minutes post-labour, it is possible to save the uterus without surgery. Again, there are only a few short minutes post-birth, while the body is still open, to correct this type of prolapse, so ask your doctor or midwife prior to a birth to see if he or she has this skill set and knowledge. I’ve been told by experienced midwives this kind of prolapse is actually not terribly hard to place back inside the body. However, if the short time window (maybe 5 minutes) is missed to put the uterus back into the body, then surgery or complete hysterectomy is the only means to correct this condition or the woman is left to live with a uterus outside of her body.
Post Labour Prolapse:
The most common time a woman will experience prolapse is immediately after childbirth. It doesn’t matter how young or old she is. Even a caesarian birth can lead to prolapse because the uterine ligaments are still stretched during the growth of a baby and the baby being pulled out, often with great force by doctors. Note, I’ve also treated patients who have suffered prolapse from particularly forceful and insensitive doctors doing routine pelvic exams and biopsies – the pelvis and uterus should always be treated with respect by you and others! No exceptions!
A mild, prolapse is considered normal immediately after labour. This said, right after labour and the following 1-3 months post-delivery are when a woman will be most successful in healing her body or most susceptible to sustaining or worsening a prolapse later on. It is very important to have the right care, take time to rest and recover the body, and eat healthily (warm, nourishing soups and foods- think bone broths). With the proper care and rest many prolapses self-correct. So women, please take the social pressures away to be “super woman” right after a birth. You are super woman enough to have grown and birthed a baby.
If a woman has a caesarian birth, she needs even more time to recover, as a caesarian is a major surgery. A vaginal birth is a natural phenomena that the body was designed to go through and the body knows how to heal from.
Too Much Heavy Lifting Prolapse:
Another common cause of prolapse is too much heavy lifting. This is especially true of woman that have just given birth. Post-vaginal birth, it is advisable that for the first month after delivery, a woman not lift anything heavier than her baby. Post-caesarian, even a woman’s baby maybe too heavy for her body to lift safely and heal well for a few weeks after surgery. This advice comes directly from Tami Lynn Kent, a women’s pelvic physiotherapist specialist based near Portland,Oregon, USA. Tami has worked on thousands of woman. Be mindful of lifting any thing heavy at other times, especially the time just before and during menstruation.
Doing Heavy Lifting Just Before During Your Period, Especially Over Time Can Weaken and Stretch the Uterine Ligaments:
During menstruation the uterus doubles in size, on average from 113 g to 227 g. The ligaments are under extra strain and the act of lifting, heavy or light objects, involves a bearing down/extra pressure on the uterus and thus ligaments. The physics of load and load bearing, such as lifting your groceries, young children, or a suitcase is dynamic. It’s not simply the weight you are picking up, but it is the motion and physical angle of load that almost always make an object heavier than it is when not motion.
For example, I used to do aerial arts as a hobby and took a rigging class. I was hooked up to a machine that could measure the ‘load’ I was generating on circus equipment when I climbed or did drops. When I climbed the aerial silks I generated an extra 13.6 kg to 18 kg in addition to my normal body weight, and this was simply because I was in motion and the rigging point of the fabric had motion and so did the stretchy fabrics I climbed. The extra force of me pulling myself up and moving was making me much heavier and registering much heavier on the scales. This force was dramatically amplified with intentional falls and drops. With the performance falls and drops I could generate several extra 100 kg of weight on the rigging point. Astonishing!
Think of your ligaments attached to the uterus and hip bones as rigging points inside the body. When the uterus is bigger (during menstruation or pregnancy) the ligaments, like my aerial silks, are under more strain. When we add movement like picking things up or putting them down, it’s much more weight than the object by itself. There are also all the kilos of organs sitting above the pelvic floor and the force of the motion!
Cultures Around the World Had Customs to Safe Guard Reproductive Aged Woman's Body:
I believe this is one reason why many cultures around the world preferred their women to not lift or work during menstruation. To have women rest during this time was a smart cultural invention to safeguard the reproductive-aged women’s bodies to be able to bear offspring during times when there wasn’t as much technology to assist when fertility issues arose. This practice would have helped to safeguard the tribe and its future generations.
Cold Can Set Us Up For Prolapse:
Another culprit to uterine prolapse is cold. Not as commonly recognized and not studied in a ‘peer reviewed’ way, cultures around the world recognized that the introduction of cold to a women’s pelvis slowed healing and may have set her up for prolapse related issues whether it be piles (hemorrhoids), hernias, or any other form of organ prolapse be it bladder, colon or uterine. Cultures around the world often taught the following to its young people, especially girls:
Don’t sit on cold floors
Don’t go out in the cold with wet hair
Don’t walk on cold floors
Keep woman’s pelvis warm, especially after child birth
The Maya people as and the ancient Chinese observed that woman who walk around on cold floors or on wet cold grass were more likely to have pelvic issues such as prolapse. Both cultures found a major meridian point on the feet that goes straight to the pelvic area; a gateway, so to speak, to allow cold to enter and weaken this part of the body. Some cultures even called this ‘cold invasion’.
The Modern Day Epidemic of Prolapse:
There seems to be an epidemic of prolapse in Western societies in modern times. I’ve been made aware women are given ice to “numb’ the vagina post birth. Holistic women practitioners that have been practicing before ice was introduced as part of birth are confirming more “prolapse” is happening during their lifetime or from when they first started practicing. Some of them blame ice. I cannot refer to peer-reviewed studies, however I can present anecdotal evidence. I have talked to women that have had births with and without ice who testify that having had no ice for some births and ice for others, that the times when no ice was used was when they healed faster and stronger with fewer complications. Again it’s not “officially tested” but I do feel there are enough stories for hundreds if not thousands of years to warrant a deep consideration to these beliefs around cold being bad for a woman’s body especially in regards to her reproduction and related body parts.
On the topic of cold, another contributing factor to prolapse and even poor digestive health, could be the introduction of cold foods to our diet on a regular basis with the invention of refrigeration. It seems to be a conundrum as refrigeration has certainly curved the deaths and illness by food spoilage and food poisoning, however, the Maya high priest healer Don Elijio Panti, whom Dr. Rosita Arvigo studied with until his death, noted that much more sickness began to show up after the invention of refrigeration. Don Elijio Panti was born in the late 1800’s before refrigerators were common household appliances. Similar to the effects of sitting on cold, eating cold foods, can have a similar effect on bodies, male or female.
Cultures in diverse places such as Russia, India, Asia, and South America all teach that piles can occur from sitting on cold floors. There may not be hard science backing this up yet, but there is also no financial incentive to study this, so we probably won’t see any studies anytime soon. Science that has finally studied acupuncture, massage and chiropractic care now confirm health benefits from these practices, which people have known about for thousands of years before science caught up. I believe our understanding of cold will be on a similar trajectory as acupuncture. Until science catches up, I suggest you keep warm and dry, especially those of us living in cooler climates and follow the advice of older practitioners and some wise traditions that have been in the field a long time. Keep your feet, hips, kidney area, neck and heads protected from cold situations and take care to limit the intake of cold food and beverage to protect youe bodies now and into the future and for the future generations to come.
Having Adequate Nutritional Support to Literally Help the Body Keep Everything Up:
Another topic for prolapse prevention, and this topic can be a bit touchy for some, is diet and nutrient intake. For reproductive aged woman and especially those that wish to become pregnant now or in the future, I cannot ethically recommend a long-term vegan diet. This will have to be a separate newsletter for more in depth, but cultures around the world often had sacred foods for the mothers and fathers to be to start before conception and certainly for the mother to consume during pregnancy and after. Where animal products were available these foods were almost always animal based, whether liver, eggs, sacred butters (harvested at a special time of year), or other organ meats or bone broths. For a comprehensive list check out Westin A. Prices’s list of Sacred Fertility Foods.
The nutrients in these foods is very important for women’s pelvic health, helping to not only grow a strong healthy baby but to keep the ligaments of the uterus strong and the pelvic floor working as it was intended, keeping everything up and inside the body. People do not regularly consume many of the foods for keeping uterine ligaments strong on a regular basis anymore. Namely, bone broth soups. If you aren’t into bone broth soups, and you want to correct a prolapse or make sure things are kept strong I recommend Hydrolysate Collagen. This is the instant building blocks for the ligaments and it’s like eating a super concentrated bone broth soup or several bowls of soup at once. When added to my foods such as a room temperature, ice free smoothy or to a soup, I don’t taste it, and quite enjoy the thicker, creamier texture it imparts.
Self-care for Prolapse
Now that we’ve covered the causes of prolapse, here is what to do to start to correct one that is present. Some of these you can do on your own and others it would be good to see an experienced practitioner.
- See an Arvigo® or Mercier therapist or someone similarly trained to work with the uterus, that can physically reposition it back, when needed, to where it should be.
- Remove all cold, especially cold food and drink and any personal habits of walking on cold floors, inside or outside the living space, bare footed.
- Begin pelvic/vaginal steaming - this is one of the best things to do for early stage (stage 1 or 2) prolapse and a great thing to do after birth when all the bleeding post birth has stopped.
- Raise the foot of your bed by 1cm higher than the head of the bed. This allows gravity to start working in your favor while you sleep, and also give the ligaments time to start to reset and heal.
- Learn hip binding/hip swaddling. It’s like belly binding but for the hips and is specific for helping uterine and hip ligaments to heal faster, plus it gives more support to the body while healing. Any Arvigo® therapist and probably most South American native healers can help with this.
- Buy Bala oil (an astringent oil from India), soak on an organic cotton tampon in the oil and insert it before you go to sleep. The astringency helps encourage the uterus to lift back to a better position.
- Take Hydrolysate Collagen to jump start the healing of uterine ligaments. Start to incorporate bone broth soups into one’s daily diet.
- On a more mind/spirit focus, create more support in one’s life, either socially and/or with family. Dr. Rosita Arvigo, founder of Arvigo® Therapy, noted in her many decades of practice, woman who weren’t supported well emotionally and physically were much more prone to physical prolapse.
Hopefully this information helps to start the conversation and attitude among women to take extra special care of their hips and pelvic space. After all, don't many woman take care of their faces and their facial beauty? Should we give the same adoration of our pelvic floors and wombs that work so hard for us?
As women, we are blessed with the ability to birth new life, but with this blessing comes the extra responsibility to take care of our pelvis and the related organs. It's like having an owner's manual for a woman's body. Woman's bodies are different and require a little extra care of the pelvic region. A bigger pelvic outlet for the ability to birth babies, and all those uterine ligaments that allow our uterus to grow and expand, as nature intended, means women are more susceptible to particular health challenges such as prolapse. This is especially true when we don’t take care of our bodies correctly. Remember prolapse is often preventable and can be easily corrected, in most cases, when caught and treated correctly early. Don't wait!