Hi I’m Michelle, I’m a physiotherapist, and I often work with women after they've had a
hysterectomy. One of the problems that ladies often tell me about having is discomfort in
their abdomen from gas, and it's really hard to shift that gas after the surgery. So I
thought today that I’d show you some really simple exercises that you can do after your hysterectomy
to help you shift the gas and relieve that gas pain, without having to take other medications
and things like that. So let's get started, I’m going to do some exercises lying down,
you can do these exercises lying in bed, and a couple of exercises that you can do in standing
as well. The first ones are lying down, and I’m just using a mat on the ground for this
purpose today, but you could do these lying in bed. Okay, let's get started.
So in bed to get into this position, if you've got an abdominal wound or obviously your pelvic wound,
rather than moving both legs up together, it's much safer just to slide one leg up at a time
into this position with your arms out beside you, this first exercise is called a lumbar rotation,
and it's just a really small roll of the knees. So you don't want to roll too far,
you don't want to feel any strain through your abdominal wound in particular,
if you had an abdominal hysterectomy, and you just keep it into a small rolling action
like this. So this is – it's also a really nice exercise for back discomfort too, but I'm talking
about moving gas today. So this is the first exercise and that's called lumbar rotations.
The second exercise that you can do to help you shift some gas is pelvic tilts. Now,
pelvic tilts means to flatten the arch of the back into the bed or into the mat,
so I’m flattening down, I'm tilting backwards, and I’m rolling back through. Now,
these exercises shouldn't cause you any discomfort at all, they should be really
comfortable, as you didn’t find tilting down and tilting back. I’ll do a couple more,
and you can do as many as you feel comfortable at home, you might just do a couple at a time,
if that's what's going to help you. And I’m going to do one more of those exercises, just tilting
back gently and rolling back through. So we've seen lumbar rotations, we've seen pelvic tilts.
The other thing you can do in bed, and particularly if you're wearing your TED
stockings is slide one foot along – one foot along the ground or along the bed at a time,
so you're sliding – this is called a heel slide exercise, so you slide the leg along
the ground and bring it back up. I’m having to lift over the towel there,
and you could slide the other leg down just again sliding along and then bringing it back.
So these are the types of exercises that give you some position change,
and changing positions is what helps you move the wind and the gas from your tummy,
and get it to passing through. And the other thing you can do is roll onto your side, so if you feel
comfortable enough, try and roll like a log. So rather than the legs going and the arm going,
you try and roll your body like a log all in one movement onto your side. You might use a pillow
underneath your tummy, if your tummy's really sore and swollen, and even just alternating side lying,
and lying on your back can also help you to shift some wind. You can find that if you can do some
gentle massage at the top of your abdomen, and I'm doing that in a clockwise direction from what I
can see from looking down, and I’m coming over and down, up, across, over and down in that position,
and that's also a nice gentle way to help you shift gas, and move gas pain.
Now, the next couple of exercises I’m going to show you are exercises in standing. So let's go
do those now. These are a couple of exercises that you might like to try when you're out of
bed to help your shift gas. The first exercise is an exercise against a windowsill or a high bench
that you might have at home, and it's an exercise just to help move the gas. I’m going to just turn
around slowly here, so this is a high windowsill, and imagine that you're leaning against it and
that you're just shifting your hips gently from side to side. So I'm just moving across side to
side, and you can also do some really gentle hula-hoop actions, so just a really gentle
rotation of the hips one way, and then back the other way. So you can see I'm just getting that
rolling action there, just really gently. You can also lean forward in that position as well,
and that can be a really relieving position if you've got gas pain. Alternatively, you could use
the back of a chair, and with the chair up against something, so it's not going to slide. And again,
using the back of the chair, I can do the same thing just rocking my hips just gently from
side to side, and then also rolling clockwise just gently, and then counterclockwise. And obviously,
walking is also going to be an excellent exercise for you to do to help you to shift gas as well.
So you've seen that we've talked about a number of exercises there that you can use to help
you relieve gas pain at home. You can do the exercises on the ground that we talked about,
the lumbar rotations, the pelvic tilts, and the heel slides in bed,
or you can do some exercise in standing, perhaps leaning against a high bench or
a windowsill or against a chair and doing your hip rotations and your pelvic rocking.
So I hope those exercises help you with your hysterectomy recovery. I’d
love you to subscribe. There's a subscribe button down below, if you'd like some more
pelvic floor safe exercises. I look forward to exercising with you again soon, and bye for now.