27/06/2025
I am sharing part of a brilliant article that was in the Australian Financial review this week.. it is about stress related pelvic pain in men and this is something we unfortunately see too often in our clinic. Please contact us if you want to find help to get overactive pelvic floor muscles to relax as we use specific myo-fascial releases as well as teaching specific exercises that you can do (go to our website and scroll down through "what we treat" to find information about perineal pain and men's pelvic floor exercises). The link to the full article is at the end of this excerpt. Dr Barb Hungerford, Senior Musculo-skeletal physiotherapist
‘I was desperate’: the stress-related pain men don’t talk about
Men in high-stress, desk-bound jobs such as finance and corporate law are the fastest-growing group of patients for bladder problems.
by Madison Darbyshire:
Jun 25, 2025 – 2.16pm
There are two main drivers of those who come in with stress-related pelvic floor dysfunction: Are you Type A? And are you in a high-stress job?
Landon was working in client services at a large investment bank in New York when he felt a sudden, acute pain in his groin. It had been a bad day, and he was stressed.
“Everything just felt tight,” Landon (a pseudonym) said, and the “burning sensation, with sharp jolts” wouldn’t go away. S*x was painful, so he avoided it. It hurt to sit, so Landon stood at his desk on the trading floor. When his co-workers asked, he told them he had lower back pain. “They’d say, ‘Yeah man, me too’.”
The pain roamed – “some days left nut, some days right nut” – making it harder to explain to the specialists he saw. But doctor after doctor ran tests, each of which came back normal. “They all pushed me out the door, saying ‘You don’t have any infection, your prostate looks normal, you’re a healthy young man’,” Landon said.
Landon, 26, has always been a little bit anxious — a high achiever in school, he went straight into a demanding, high-pressure role in finance. “I spend all day delivering bad news to clients and getting chewed out,” he said. He thought about taking medical leave for the pain, but worried human resources wouldn’t believe him.
It wasn’t until Landon visited Pelvis NYC, a specialised physical therapy clinic, that he learned his pelvic floor – the group of muscles responsible for bladder control and holding multiple organs in place – was extremely tight. It’s a common problem among men, and yet Landon had thought only women had pelvic floors. But therapists who treat pelvic floor dysfunction say men – especially those in high-stress, desk-bound jobs such as finance and corporate law — are one of the fastest-growing groups of patients.
Many men don’t even know they have a pelvic floor, even though it controls basic functions including bowels, posture and sexual performance. Most don’t openly discuss their symptoms. Due to lingering stigma around pe**le pain and erectile dysfunction (ED), the men interviewed for this article agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. ..
“Often the muscles of the pelvic floor have become overactive, and can’t relax,” said Chad Woodard, a researcher and doctor of physical therapy.
Men in high-stress, desk-bound jobs such as finance and corporate law are the fastest-growing group of patients for bladder problems.
