During both a TVT, and the newer TOT, a tape is drawn under the urethra.  The theory is that the tape will support the urethra so that under the “stress” of sneezing, coughing, etc., it will eliminate the leaking of urine that women who suffer from stress incontinence are familiar with. 

A generally accepted figure for the success of these operations in the short term is 80-85%, with 10-15% of women being no better or worse after the surgery than they were before, with around 5% likely to be worse than they were before surgery.

Surgery can make urinary stress incontinence worse in the long term because it never addresses the root cause of the problem of urinary stress incontinence - weakened pelvic floor muscles.  These surgeries involve the formation of scar tissue around the tape to hold it in place.  It may only be a matter of time before the repair becomes ineffective as the weakness in the pelvic structure increases further over time, and then the incontinence will eventually reappear.  The muscles are likely to weaken further with age, and often with the onset of the menopause.

Sometimes these surgeries may be repeated.  One recent hospital report states that 57% of women presenting for urodynamic evaluation had already had some form of pelvic surgery.  However, there comes a point where no further surgery can be carried out.  The woman may then be left permanently incontinent. 

“In most continence surgery the benefit of restoring continence is often at the expense of developing new symptoms, or exacerbating existing lower urinary tract symptoms”.  This is from a study undertaken by the Department of Urology, Mid-Western Regional Hospital, Limerick, and the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the Regional Maternity Hospital, Limerick, and documented in the National Institute of Health Sciences Bulletin, June 2004.

Despite extensive searching it seems impossible to find any results of the long term effectiveness of these surgeries.  5 years is not long enough to qualify as a long term study considering the life-span of women today.  Women who submit to surgery for urinary stress incontinence should be aware that they may be taking part in what may be nothing more than a large scale clinical trial.  Some women’s lives have been devastated by useless and ineffective surgery.

Health services around the world are investing billions in solutions that can in many cases make a problem worse or create new problems.

“There is a better way than surgery to correct most cases of pubococcygeal weakness” Dr Arnold Kegel, TIME magazine, 3 Dec 1956. 

The better way Dr Kegel was referring to over 50 years ago is exercising the pelvic floor muscle against resistance.  By 1950, routine surgery for urinary stress incontinence was no longer carried out in his hospital as resistance exercise was found to be more effective.

“On the strength of these favorable results urinary stress incontinence in women is no longer routinely treated by surgical intervention at…LA County General Hospital.”  Dr Kegel (A progress in Gynecology 1950, p768).

How can any ‘repair job’ ever be better than a woman strengthening her body to the degree that a ‘repair is unnecessary?  A ‘repair job’ to alleviate urinary stress incontinence may cause more problems in the long term than it resolves.  Dr Kegel was quoted in one paper as saying that he found that the few women who did not achieve good results with resistance exercise were those who had scar tissue from previous operations.

Resistance exercise must not be confused with the nonsensical instruction to squeeze your pelvic floor muscles against nothing.  This cannot prevent or alleviate urinary stress incontinence in the same way that working the muscles against resistance can.  Pelvic floor exercises were never meant to be done the way they are taught today.  They were ALWAYS meant to be performed against resistance.  It could be argued that anyone who instructs women to squeeze against nothing may contribute to the problem, as women conclude that pelvic floor exercises don’t work for them and opt for surgery as a result. 

Many women today have an attitude of doctor knows best.  Sadly they don’t always know best, many don’t know the value of resistance exercise.  Doctors may not always tell you all the facts about surgery and the possible after-effects.  Your body is the only one you will have in this life.  Look after it well.  Inform yourself as to what will work in your best interest.

If resistance exercise was more widely practised today we would see a significant reduction in the amount of women suffering from urinary stress incontinence along with the number of surgical procedures performed. A solution that has been proven to stop urinary stress incontinence without surgery deserves to be more widely known, to allow women to make a more informed choice before consenting to surgery.

We’ve all heard that a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result.

Isn’t that what we’ve done for years with Kegel exercises?  Countless hours of practising while wondering if we’d got the right muscle or if there was any point anyway as we weren’t really feeling that our effort was making any difference. 

A little known fact about Kegel exercises which often surprises people when they first hear it is that they were never meant to be performed the way in which they are today.  Indeed, they were never meant to be performed the way they have been for decades! 

Dr Kegel was an American surgeon, Associate Professor of Gynaecology at the University of Southern California and Health Commissioner of Chicago, who spent more than thirty-two years in the study of the female pelvis and the muscles therein.

His studies document his results with thousands of women that show the incredible benefits to be gained from Kegel exercises when performed correctly. In 1950 Dr Kegel had achieved complete relief of urinary stress incontinence in 93% of a group of 300 women in this way. 

"On the strength of these favorable results urinary stress incontinence in women is no longer routinely treated by surgical intervention at...LA County General Hospital."  Dr Kegel. (A progress in Gynecology, 1950 p.786) 

Isn’t it amazing to think that the results he was getting in the last century are even better than the generally accepted success rates for incontinence surgery carried out today? How were these results achieved? 

By ensuring that the exercise protocol that his patients followed consisted of two essential elements: 

1)  Isolating the pelvic floor muscle (using no abdominal, buttock or thigh muscles)

2)  Working the pelvic floor muscle against resistance

What is commonly known as a Kegel exercise today bears little relation to authentic Kegel exercises.  Dr Kegel knew that the exercises were pretty useless without either of these components.  If you’ve been struggling to get results with Kegel exercises, maybe for years, now you know why they seem to be exercises in futility. 

Think about it like this - Squeezing against nothing is about as effective as trying to rehabilitate or build muscle in your arm simply by flexing it up and down, you could do that forever and see little improvement.  However, put a small weight in your hand and exercise against the resistance of that, adding slightly heavier weights as the arm gets stronger and improvement in strength and tone is inevitable.
 

Imagine going to the gym and finding all the equipment has been taken out and you're told you can go through the motions of doing the exercise and achieve the same result! This is what women have been told about pelvic floor exercise over the last half century, and still are.  By merely going through the motions of doing the exercise you cannot come close to achieving the results that come from actually doing the proper exercise. 

Dr Kegel was quoted in TIME magazine, Dec 3rd, 1956 as saying, “There is a better way than surgery to correct most cases of pubococcygeal weakness”.
 

Considering the vast amount of surgery that is carried out for incontinence and prolapse it has to be fairly obvious at this stage that there is something missing from pelvic floor exercises as is normally taught. 

An enlightened approach to Kegel exercises involves asking the questions “What is missing here?”  Why are women not getting the results they were promised?”  It is clearly insane to keep teaching women to squeeze against nothing, when the results of such a misguided approach are so poor.  An enlightened approach involves doing the exercises as they were meant to be done, in a way that produces real results.
 

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Abigail O’Donovan is the founder of Kegelmaster Europe.  She discovered by researching the subject of pelvic floor exercises that the way the exercises are taught today is a watered down version of powerful exercises that when properly performed could reduce the need for unnecessary pelvic surgery to near zero.  She has devoted herself to raising awareness of the need for the facts about effective pelvic floor exercise to be known.  Discover how to make Kegel exercises work for you at http://www.kegelmaster.co.uk

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This article may be reproduced freely without charge on condition that it is not edited in any way and the bio and live link remain intact.

If you’re serious about transforming your sex life we want you to have the best vaginal exerciser to help you do that.

There are some cheap imitations of the Kegelmaster on the market.  At first glance they may look similar but they’re not.

If you are thinking of buying any pelvic floor exerciser check to see if it has 15 levels of resistance and a patented safety mechanism (this looks like a knob on the top of the unit).  A vaginal exerciser that doesn’t have these is not a genuine Kegelmaster.  

The Kegelmaster was the first progressive resistance vaginal exerciser on the market anywhere in the world.  The Kegelmaster is for women who want the best and are not prepared to settle for anything less. 

Not only is it fantastic for transforming your sex life at any age but the Kegelmaster is an enjoyable way for women to exercise this most important muscle group.  Isn’t it great to know that something that’s so fantastic for revving up our sex life can be so good for our general health as well?

Pelvic floor exercises are ineffective without resistance.  Why are women still not being told the truth about this?  Think about it like this; the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists estimate that 1 in 3 women will suffer from a problem of incontinence in her lifetime.  Pelvic floor exercises as they're normally taught, squeezing against nothing, have been taught in every ante-natal class for years.

If they worked how could we possibly see statistics like that?  We couldn't.

Women sometimes do these exercises for years but find them to be of little help. 

The reason why they don't work is because pelvic floor exercises must always be performed against resistance to be effective.

Try building muscle in your arm simply by flexing it a couple of hundred times a day and see how effective that is - you get the idea! 

Sadly because the truth about pelvic floor exercises is not widely known many women have surgeries for incontinence and prolapse that could easily be prevented with resistance exercise.

Dr Arnold Kegel, an American gynaecological surgeon, associate professor of gynaecology at the University of Southern California and Health Commissioner of Chicago who spent more than thirty-two years in the study of the female pelvis and the muscles therein, dicovered that resistance exercise was a better way to treat most cases of pelvic floor weakness.

“There is a better way than surgery to correct most cases of pubococcygeal weakness”,  Dr Kegel, TIME magazine, Dec 3rd, 1956.

The G-SHOT Plastic Surgery Invades the G-spot LOVE-YOUR-BODY WARNING: The G-shot or any collagen augmentation of the G-spot is unnecessary and may be harmful  by Deborah Sundahl Copyright © 2007

A new plastic surgery surgery procedure, called the G-shot, which injects collagen into the G-spot to create arousal and increase its size, has attracted media attention. Women should be cautioned against this procedure for these seven reasons:

1) The G-spot is the female prostate. It is an organ, not a spot. In 2001, the term ‘female prostate’ was defined in Histology Terminology, the medical journal responsible for naming anatomical parts. Unfortunately, doctors who are performing this G-shot procedure are mostly uninformed on this fact, because previous to this, the medical profession has considered the female prostate vestigial “dried up and non-functioning,” or denied its existence altogether - as one gynecologist so eloquently put it in USA Today, “The G-spot is as real as a UFO.” On the G-shot website and most other resources, this organ is still depicted as a spot. Therefore, too little is known about the female prostate in general, much less the effects that collagen injections would have on the numerous (up to 48) tiny ducts and glands that make up the female prostate — the G-spot.

2) The location of the G-spot on the G-shot website and many other resources is uninformed and erroneous. The female prostate’s glands and ducts, surrounded by erectile tissue, is sprinkled along the urethral canal. It begins at the outside opening of the urethra, and extends approximately two inches along urethral canal. Since the urethral canal parallels the vaginal canal, the G-spot can therefore be felt 1) around the opening of the urethra (urethral meatus area); 2) at the opening of the vagina, and 3) just inside the vagina through the vaginal roof.

In her book, Deborah Sundahl defines the head, body and tail of the G-spot. The G-spot’s head surrounds the urethral opening and continues to the vaginal opening. The body is just inside the vaginal opening, where one can feel the famous G-spot ridges. The tail is the area approximately two inches inside the vagina where one’s finger naturally curves around the tail of this organ, and is the famous location where most women feel the most sensation — only if they have not yet awakened their entire G-spot. In a fully awakened G-spot, the entire organ is sensitive.

3) The size of the G-spot on the G-shot website and many other resources is incorrect. The G-shot website states that collagen injection will make the G-spot “...about the size of a quarter in width, and one fourth of an inch in height (meaning the projection into the vagina)” A collagen injected G-spot is the same size as a normal woman’s aroused G-spot! Therefore, collagen injection into the G-spot is unnecessary, and a questionable sales hype with serious health risks.

4) The G-shot procedure is a potential health risk. The long list of 68 health risks listed on the G-shot website is blood curdling. The procedure is not approved by the FDA, and the G-shot website states the collagen they use is second-rate, “an ‘off label’ use”.

Plastic surgeons do not know the full risks involved in collagen injections to the G-spot, if they do not know that the G-spot is the female prostate!

5) A feminist issue — the G-shot procedure takes advantage of women who are sexually frustrated. Many women feel thwarted in their attempts at trying to find their G-spots and/or awaken its natural state of ultra-sensitivity due to the lack of information and outright neglect of the G-spot’s (female prostate’s) central role in female sexuality. This ignorance, caused by a medical profession that still carries misogynistic attitudes towards women’s bodies, is the root of many women’s sexual complaints, as well as stress and divorce in many marriages. Women need to actively protest against attitudes that put their bodies and health at risk, and denigrate and minimize their sexuality at the expense of selling a questionable (and costly - $1,800 to $6,00) G-shot procedure.

6) The real problem: Most women do not feel aroused by their G-spot. Since the G-spot is the female prostate, it is therefore ultra sensitive. What is going on with women that most do not feel exquisite feelings in their vagina, since this organ - as men can attest to - is by nature extremely sensitive?

Switching gender roles for a moment may help us understand this situation. What would men do if their partners came at them with a hard, large dildo, and rammed it to their prostates? Perhaps numb out? Perhaps shut down sexually? Perhaps say, “Not tonight, dear. I have a headache?” Perhaps find it difficult to have an orgasm, and then feel confused (and perhaps a little abused) when the culture cries from every corner that 1) men are not as easily aroused as women; 2) perhaps men are not orgasmic and just not meant to have orgasms; and 3) the most insulting discourse yet: what is the evolutionary nature of the male orgasm anyway?

7) The solution: Use a natural cure. A woman’s G-spot deserves time and attention, not injections! It is fairly easy to awaken these sensations with informed education, as well as some healthy erotic techniques. When the G-spot’s sensations are naturally awakened, they are more exquisite than the sensation of being pumped up with collagen — and under a woman’s control!

Deborah Sundahl is founder of The Female Ejaculation Sex Education Institute< sup>, author of Female Ejaculation and the G-spot (printed in three languages), producer and host of three DVD’s on this topic (including the first video on female ejaculation (1991), international lecturer and seminar leader, as well as a life long spokesperson for female sexuality. She has studied the scientific findings and discourse on the G-spot for over 20 years.  A trained herbalist, she cautions against the use of collagen injections to achieve sensitivity in the G-spot — the female prostate — preferring a natural, sex education approach. Her website www.deborahsundahl.com - is A Collagen Free G-spot Zone.