Does pelvic floor disorder go hand in hand with vulvodynia? Questions about diff treatments

Hi All,

So finally after 10 years the doctor figured out what is wrong with me.

I have vulvodynia, but I also have pelvic floor disorder (one of the muscles inside is tense and aggravated). I wonder if that is what caused it? When the doctor pressed on the muscle I felt the burning even on the outside instantly.

I'm wondering if anyone had any luck with physical therapy? I was also prescribed nortriptyline, but I would like to try the natural route first. I read that a lot of people gain weight from anti depressants and I don't want to deal with that

Hi!

Well, vulvodynia isn't a single disease/condition for everyone. Vulvodynia is a diagnosis based off of elimination of other conditions (e.g. yeast, BV, STDs, etc.), and when your doctor cannot find a cause for your pain, they may diagnose you with vulvodynia, which is simply chronic vulvar pain without a known cause. Basically they are telling you that you're in pain, but they don't know why.

Pelvic floor issues are definitely on the list of conditions that cause chronic pain.

I have not tried physical therapy, but if you don't get many replies from women on here who have tried it, you can do a search of the forum to see what women have said in the past. From what I've read, most have a positive outcome if their condition is related to something PT can help with.

Good luck!

I've found a lot of benefit in physical therapy. I'm also on duloxetine and I think the two treatments have complimented each other - duloxetine to calm the nerves down, exercises and physical therapy to help stretch out and relax the muscles. I've had about fifteen PT sessions over a year and a bit. I've put in a lot of time at home doing the prescribed exercises. It takes a lot of patience and has been very much a two steps forward one back kind of process but when I think back to how much pain I was in a year ago and my average pain now it's gone from flares that are 6/10 on the pain scale (I rate my pain conservatively, so 8/10 would be the worst migraine, 10/10 I'd be unconscious!) to now flares of 2/10 and most of the time I only have very low level background pain.