Well Woman Physio

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Well Woman Physio

🌟 PhysioForYou with Esther
🩺 Specialist MSK Physiotherapist
🎓 17 years experience | Masters Qualified
✨ Helping you move better, live better!

31/08/2026

🧘‍♀️ I’m a physio AND a yoga teacher… but I wouldn’t prescribe yoga alone for your bones.

A new 2026 meta-analysis found that mind–body exercise, including yoga, Pilates and Tai Chi, may have benefits for bone health in perimenopausal women.

But the evidence was low to very low certainty — and yoga shouldn’t be considered a powerful bone-building treatment on its own.

Yoga has LOTS of benefits: mobility, balance, strength, body awareness and simply enjoying movement.

But our bones need LOAD too.

🏋️ Progressive resistance training
🦴 Impact/loading exercise
🧘‍♀️ Yoga

It doesn’t have to be yoga OR weights.

For midlife women, a combination is likely to give us the best of both worlds. 💜

Follow me for evidence based advice !

24/08/2026

Hip dysplasia isn’t just a baby diagnosis. 💗

This one is very personal to me.

My eldest son was born with severe hip dysplasia, and my younger son later had mild dysplasia in both hips.

So before I ever looked at DDH through a physio lens, I knew it as a mum — scans, appointments, treatment, and wondering what it might mean not just now, but years into the future.

And I think that’s what parents worry about most.

Will they walk normally? Run? Play sport? Will this affect them as an adult?

Now, as my eldest hits puberty, I’m more alert for things like pain, changes in activity tolerance or how he moves.

But there’s a balance.

I want to notice anything important without making him wary of his hip or fearful of activity.

Because that isn’t the message the evidence gives us.

Many children with DDH do extremely well.

Hip dysplasia can be diagnosed in adolescence and adulthood too — sometimes because symptoms develop, and sometimes because it’s found incidentally on imaging.

But importantly:

Dysplasia on a scan does not automatically mean pain or disability.

Some people with significant dysplasia are active and symptom-free. Others may benefit from rehab, load management or specialist assessment.

It’s why I keep coming back to this:

The diagnosis matters.
The scan matters.
But neither tells the whole story.

And maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to this area professionally now — because for me, hip dysplasia has never just been something in a textbook. 💗

If your baby or child has been diagnosed with DDH, or you’re an adult trying to make sense of a hip dysplasia diagnosis, DM me if you want to chat!

23/08/2026

“My MRI says I have a labral tear…” 😬

Understandably, the word tear can sound pretty alarming.

But this is where we need to put our detective hats back on. 🔎

The labrum is a ring of fibrocartilage around the hip socket. It helps deepen the socket, contributes to stability and helps maintain the seal within the hip joint.

And yes — labral pathology can cause hip pain.

But finding a labral tear on an MRI doesn’t automatically mean we’ve found the cause of your pain.

Labral tears are also seen on scans in people who have no hip symptoms at all.

So rather than stopping at:

MRI → labral tear → diagnosis

…I want to keep following the clues.

🔎 Where is your pain — deep in the groin, around the hip, elsewhere?

🔎 What brings it on — sitting, running, squatting, twisting, getting in and out of the car?

🔎 Is clicking or catching painful, or has your hip always clicked?

🔎 How does your hip move?

🔎 What happens when we load it?

🔎 What does your strength and function look like?

🔎 Is there evidence of FAI morphology, dysplasia, osteoarthritis or instability that might also be relevant?

🔎 And crucially — does what we find on assessment actually match what we see on the scan?

Because sometimes the labral tear is an important part of the puzzle.

Sometimes it’s one of several pieces.

And sometimes it’s simply something we’ve discovered because we went looking. 👀

It also doesn’t automatically mean surgery.

For many people, appropriate rehabilitation — looking at strength, movement, load tolerance, activity and individual goals — is a very reasonable part of management. Others may need further investigation or an orthopaedic opinion.

The scan matters. The structure matters.

But neither should be interpreted in isolation.

🔎 A scan finding is a clue, not a conclusion.

I’ve gone into much more detail about hip labral tears, MRI findings, treatment and when surgery might be considered in the accompanying blog. 💗

21/08/2026

🎵 Shakira says hips don’t lie…

…but when it comes to hip scans, they might not tell you the whole truth. 👀

FAI — femoroacetabular impingement syndrome — is a motion-related hip condition associated with certain shapes of the femur and/or acetabulum, which can result in earlier contact during particular hip movements.

But here’s the important bit 👇

Having a cam or pincer shape does NOT automatically mean you have FAI syndrome.

In fact, these shapes can exist in people with absolutely no hip pain at all.

So once again, we’re back to our detective work… 🔎

For a diagnosis of FAI syndrome, we’re looking for the combination of:

🔎 Symptoms that fit
🔎 Clinical signs on assessment
🔎 Relevant imaging findings

So if your X-ray or MRI mentions cam morphology, pincer morphology or “impingement”, we don’t just stop there.

We ask:

Does this actually fit your symptoms?

Does it fit what happens when you move your hip?

Does it fit what we find when we assess you?

And does it actually explain why you’re struggling with the things you want to do?

Sometimes that scan finding is an important part of the story.

Sometimes it’s one of several contributing factors.

And sometimes… it’s an innocent bystander. 👀

So perhaps Shakira was right after all…

Your hips might not lie — but we still need to know how to interpret what they’re telling us. 💃🔎🩷

Next up in the Hip Pain Files…

Labral tears.

20/08/2026

🎵 Cue the detective music… 🔎🩷

Hip pain is one of those areas where I often feel a little bit like a detective.

And after nearly 20 years working in MSK physio, it’s actually one of the parts of my job I love most — following the clues and piecing everything together.

Because pain here doesn’t automatically mean the problem is here.

So we investigate…

And that usually starts with a LOT of questions. 😂

Some are obviously about your hip. Others might seem completely random — but I promise there’s method behind them. I’m not just being nosey!

🔎 Where exactly is the pain — groin, side of the hip, buttock, thigh?

🔎 When did it start? Suddenly, gradually, after an injury… or seemingly out of nowhere?

🔎 What brings it on — walking, running, sitting, stairs, getting out of the car, lying on that side?

🔎 What makes it better?

🔎 What happens first thing in the morning? And what happens at night?

🔎 Any back pain, pins and needles, numbness or symptoms further down the leg?

🔎 Has your activity changed recently — more running, less training, a new gym programme, a particularly busy few weeks?

🔎 Previous injuries or surgery — even ones you think are completely unrelated?

🔎 What does your working day look like?

🔎 How are you sleeping?

🔎 Where are you in terms of menstrual cycle, perimenopause or menopause, where relevant?

🔎 What about your general health, medications and bone health?

🔎 And perhaps most importantly — what has this pain actually stopped you doing?

Then we add another layer of clues from your assessment: hip and spinal movement, strength, load tolerance, functional tasks and whatever else your individual story points us towards.

And if you arrive with an X-ray or MRI?

That becomes another clue — not automatically the answer.

Sometimes there’s one obvious suspect.

Sometimes there are several accomplices. 👀

Over the next few posts, I’ll be putting some of the usual hip suspects under investigation… 🔎🩷

The Hip Pain Files are officially open. 🕵️‍♀️

16/08/2026

Almost every woman I’ve treated after hysterectomy or prolapse surgery has been worried about the same thing…

Lifting. I've been told I can never lift heavy again!

“Will I damage the repair?”
“Could I cause another prolapse?”
“How much is too much?”

I’ve been doing a deep dive into the research around rehabilitation after hysterectomy and prolapse surgery, and it’s been fascinating.

Because the evidence is evolving.

Some of the traditional post-operative restrictions we’ve given women for years have surprisingly little evidence behind them. And newer research is beginning to challenge the idea that women need prolonged restrictions after uncomplicated prolapse surgery.

That absolutely doesn’t mean anything goes.

The operation matters. Healing matters. Symptoms matter. And there are still important gaps in the research — particularly around longer-term outcomes and returning to heavier loads.

But I think there’s a really exciting space here for physiotherapy:

Heal → assess → progressively rebuild strength and capacity.

Not simply “don’t lift for six weeks” followed by “off you go”.

I’m really excited about this next chapter of my pelvic health work — developing an increasingly evidence-based approach to post-operative rehabilitation and helping women get back to lifting, exercise and everyday life without being frightened of their bodies. 💜

And I genuinely can’t wait to see where the research takes us next.

13/08/2026

NEW RESEARCH 👀 Does it matter WHERE you apply va**nal oestrogen?

A new 2026 study looked at women using oestrogen cream to help prevent recurrent UTIs after menopause.

Researchers compared applying the cream inside the va**na with applying it around the urethral area.

After 6 months, the results were remarkably similar:

👉 52.6% using va**nal application were UTI-free
👉 50.9% using periurethral application were UTI-free

And interestingly, va**nal itching was reported much less often with periurethral application.

Does this mean you should change how you use your va**nal oestrogen? Not necessarily.

But it does add to our understanding of how local oestrogen can support the tissues around the va**na, urethra and bladder — and could offer another option for women who find internal applicators difficult or irritating.

I’ve written a blog explaining the study, what it means (and what it doesn’t mean!) in plain English.

💜 Link in bio to read more.

Zuo SW et al. Obstet Gynecol. 2026. DOI: 10.1097/AOG.0000000000006376

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