How Do You Get Rid of Chronic Pelvic Pain? Sometimes You Just Manage the Discomfort
Key takeaways:
If you’ve dealt with chronic pelvic pain, you know there’s no instant way to make it go away.
Sometimes, a heating pad or ice can bring relief.
Other times, lifestyle changes — such as diet changes or physical therapy — can help you manage the pain.
Do you ever experience pain in your pelvic area? If so, you’re not alone — 1 in 7 women experience it in the U.S. For some, the pain can be disabling.
Pelvic pain is associated with health conditions like endometriosis, uterine fibroids, ovarian cysts, pelvic inflammatory disease, and complications from pregnancy or childbirth.
Although it’s common, pelvic pain shouldn’t be ignored. If you’re someone who experiences chronic pelvic pain, your provider may do tests to diagnose the issue and recommend treatment.
Here’s how three women describe what their chronic pelvic pain was like and what steps they took to ease the pain.
Pelvic pain is always on her mind
Laura Kaminer, a 44-year-old entrepreneur and television co-host in Georgia, began experiencing pelvic pain a few years after the birth of her fourth child.
It sometimes felt like a cramping or a tugging or pulling sensation, she says, and other times it felt more like unexplained bloating.
Read more like this
Explore these related articles, suggested for readers like you.
“At times, the pain would be sharp and area-specific,” she says. “Other times, it would feel as if my whole belly was inflamed.”
Laura tried everything from over-the-counter pain relievers to heating pads and warm baths to try to find relief. She also sought help from a specialist.
One attributed her pain to scar tissue.
“My Ob-Gyn decided I needed a hysterectomy,” Laura says. But after her hysterectomy, her pain continued and even got worse.
After two more years, she was diagnosed with endometriosis while undergoing an exploratory laparoscopy. After removing some of the adhesions, Laura says she experienced some short-term relief. But again, the pain returned.
“After seeing another specialist, I was eventually diagnosed with interstitial cystitis,” a painful bladder condition. Laura says she copes with it by making changes to her medications, diet, and lifestyle.
She says she feels better when she avoids foods like coffee, chocolate, caffeine, and processed foods, as well as foods high in sugar.
“I have found that for me, occasionally eating small amounts of these foods and drinks doesn’t cause problems,” she says. “It becomes a problem when I overindulge or make a habit of eating these things regularly.”
Laura says that she still experiences pelvic pain, but it is no longer a daily problem.
“Pelvic pain — and the struggles that come with it — are always in the front of my mind,” she says. “Even when I’m not in pain, I am constantly thinking about what I must do to avoid the pain. From the clothes I wear, to what I consume, it’s a constant battle of weighing the odds of ‘payback’ my body may have. Simple things like indulging in a cup of coffee or wearing snug-fitting pants can cause pain and discomfort for days.”
More severe than period pain
Brittany Ferri, a 31-year-old occupational therapist in New York, first began experiencing pelvic pain around the time she started puberty.
“At the start of my very first period, I was starting to experience [pelvic] pain. I thought it was normal at the time,” she says. “I was told ‘Oh, it’s your period. This is how it goes.’ And, of course, at the beginning of my menstrual cycle, I didn’t have any frame of reference.”
For a while, Brittany kept it to herself, saying, “I just kind of had to hunker down and do what I had to do to feel better during this time of the month.”
But she was dealing with what she describes as a deep pain throughout her pelvis and back. Sometimes, it would make her entire abdomen swollen and tender to the touch. She tried over-the-counter medications that were targeted toward menstrual pain. But she didn’t find relief.
Eventually, the pain she was experiencing became so severe that she was missing work and school. Her providers discovered a cyst and attributed her pelvic pain to that, she says. A few months later, she was diagnosed with endometriosis.
For a while, she found things like heating pads to be the most effective way of treating the pain when it would get bad. Now, she finds that ice is more helpful in treating deep internal pelvic pain.
“I also found a CBD warming cream,” she says. “I feel like that’s just an absolute savior.”
She also finds that drinking hot tea — especially peppermint or ginger — can bring her soothing relief. Other things she finds helpful in managing chronic pain are acupuncture, regular exercise, and herbal supplements designed to support hormone balance. She says that compression can also help, but at other times compression can make the pelvic pain worse.
Finding the right specialist made a difference
Kassie Hanson, a 33-year-old mommy blogger and pediatric speech-language pathologist in Nebraska, experienced pelvic pain with each of her three pregnancies, as well as during the postpartum period.
During her third pregnancy, however, her pelvic pain became quite severe. The pain lasted throughout the day and into the night.
“It even hurt to walk,” Kassie says. “If I had to move in a particular way, like, if I had to twist in a specific way and lean over to get a kid or get a toy that dropped, it was shooting pain. It was really uncomfortable.”
After her second and third pregnancies, Kassie went to physical therapy to help address the pain.
“After this third pregnancy, I would say I’m like, 90% better,” she says. “There’s every so often where if I do a specific kind of move, I can feel just a twinge of it [pelvic pain]. I still feel some residual effects, but it doesn’t hinder me from doing anything.”
Kassie says that physical therapy did make a big difference in treating her chronic pain. But finding the right provider, she says — someone who had years of experience helping women manage chronic pelvic pain — was the key to her success.
What does the doctor say?
Patricia Pinto-Garcia, MD, MPH
Medical Editor
Dealing with pelvic pain can be really tough. The symptoms can vary and change throughout your menstrual cycle, and even from cycle to cycle. This unpredictability can make it really hard to go about your daily life.
It’s important to try and figure out what triggers your pain, whether it’s certain foods, activities, or specific times of the day or month. It may take some time, but like these stories show, most people are able to identify a few triggers and then take steps to either avoid or manage them.
These stories also emphasize the importance of being open to different types of treatment and using a combination of approaches. When it comes to pelvic pain, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. There are many different causes of pelvic pain, and each person’s experience with that cause is unique.
Sometimes, people never discover the exact cause of their pain, while others receive multiple diagnoses, all of which could be contributing to the pain. Since everyone’s reasons for pelvic pain and their responses to treatment are different, each person needs a personalized approach to managing their pain. It’s helpful to have various options available, some for mild pain and others for more intense pain.
Seeking advice from healthcare providers and others who have gone through similar experiences can be beneficial, but don’t feel discouraged if not all the advice works for you. Keep listening to your body and how it responds to treatments.
With time, you will discover the best ways to manage your symptoms so that pelvic pain doesn't take control of your life.
Why trust our experts?
