Can Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy Help with Fertility?

The short answer… YES!

Let’s talk about why:

Infertility affects roughly 15% of women of childbearing age. Infertility is technically defined as difficulty conceiving after one year of trying. Every person is different as they navigate their journeys to conceive, but often women feel hopeless and frustrated as they are working through this.  Infertility can stem from ovulation difficulties, especially in those with a diagnosis of endometriosis or PCOS. Infertility can also be caused by hormonal imbalances, which your doctor can help treat with hormone therapies and lifestyle changes.

Yet another explanation for infertility is mechanical infertility. This is when there is an obstruction preventing the sperm from meeting the egg. This can be caused by scar tissue being present throughout the abdominal region (which can be from any prior surgery), or from another disorder or disease like endo or PCOS.  Additionally, mechanical restrictions have been associated with inflammation and blockages in the pelvis. Those restrictions prevent proper blood flow to the reproductive system.

Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy has been proven to help reduce mechanical infertility through manual techniques that improve mobility, improve scar movement within the body, and decrease adhesions. A pelvic floor physical therapist can also provide visceral mobilization to allow for improved blood and lymphatic flow throughout the pelvis and restore normal motions to those organs to optimize function.

This type of manual therapy performed by a pelvic floor PT has been shown to reverse female infertility in patients with fallopian tube occlusions, endometriosis, and PCOS. In 2015, a ten-year retrospective study found manual PT to have positive outcomes in fertility.

Additional work on diaphragmatic breathing can be helpful in decreasing the overall tension in the pelvic floor and abdominal cavity.  Pelvic floor PT has also been shown to decrease symptoms associated with endometriosis and PCOS (the most common physiological causes of infertility), as well as painful intercourse.

If you are struggling with infertility, you can improve your odds by adding pelvic PT to your course of action.

“Ten-year Retrospective Study on the Efficacy of a Manual Physical Therapy to Treat Female Infertility”. Amanda D Rice, Kimberley Patterson, Leslie B Wakefield, Evette D Reed, Kelseanne P Breder, Belinda F Wurn, Richard King Iii, Lawrence J Wurn. PMID: 25691329