Like many people, Corrine Macchi had never heard of pelvic floor therapy ten years ago. She came across it while working as a physical therapy aide and realized it was a field she found interesting and wanted to pursue further.
Now, having obtained her Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Drexel University, Dr. Macchi, who also has a degree in business administration, recently opened Modern Core Health & Wellness, her own physical therapy practice in Santa Monica.
While she offers various kinds of orthopedic physical therapy, as well as yoga instruction, she specializes in pelvic floor therapy – an area she said is often misunderstood and stigmatized, but has the potential to help treat a wide range of conditions.
"There is a bowl of muscles basically at the base of your trunk that is the pelvic floor," she explained. "That is obviously connected to your pelvis, but there are other muscles that connect onto your pelvis that could be impacting the pelvic floor, and also the nerves that supply these muscles."
"Everything’s kind of connected, so lower back pain, for example, might actually start from your pelvic floor," she said.
Dr. Macchi said pelvic floor therapy can help people of any gender with issues including bladder function, bowel function, sexual function and pelvic pain and can also help relieve symptoms of uterine and ovarian-related conditions such as endometriosis, PCOS and postpartum issues.
She said pelvic floor physical therapists often work with other medical specialties to effectively treat patients and supplement and complement other forms of care.
"Pelvic floor PT helps to reach your goals that medicine might not necessarily take care of," she said. "We’re pretty collaborative with other specialties, specifically gynecology, urology, GI (gastrointestinal) docs, etc. to kind of do a little bit of detective work as far as which system is responsible for causing the issue that someone is experiencing."
Dr. Macchi said pelvic floor therapy typically involves a combination of education to help patients better understand where their own pelvic floor is and what is going on with it as well as manual therapy and personalized exercises. However, she said she works closely with each individual patient to develop a plan that they are comfortable with to address their unique needs and concerns.
"I always team up with the patient and if they’re not comfortable doing something, there are other ways as to how we can approach getting them to where they need to be," she said. "That’s something really big that I want everyone to know – it’s a collaborative effort, it’s not just me telling you what to do."
She said research shows that it typically takes between six to eight weeks to make true musculoskeletal changes.
"I expect to see results within that time period, but depending on what their background is and what is going on, that might be sooner or that might be later, but that’s kind of a ballpark."
Dr. Macchi said she typically sees patients once a week and uses an online platform to send instructions for how to do exercises at home. She does not accept health insurance directly but said she can provide patients with an itemized superbill for reimbursement from their insurance.
Modern Core Health and Wellness is located at 1513 6th Street, Suite 102 Santa Monica, CA 90401.
For more information, to view a full list of services and to make an appointment visit: https://www.moderncorehealth.com/services
