The understanding and definition of pelvic pain in women, including its  symptoms of dyspareunia, causes, risk factors, diagnostic tests, the understanding of its complications and other relevant matters is currently in transition.  The treatment, drugs, lifestyle issues and concepts about home treatment are also in transition.  We believe that the Wise-Anderson Protocol has often been far more effective and safer in the treatment of pelvic pain in women than the conventional treatment of drugs and surgery.

Below is an excerpt from the 5th edition of A Headache in the Pelvis:

“Millions of men and women suffer from pelvic pain, discomfort, or dysfunction. These disorders, which can be called chronic pelvic pain syndromes (CPPS), usually include one or a number of symptoms including rectal, genital, or abdominal discomfort or pain, increased discomfort or pain sitting down, discomfort or pain during or after sexual activity, and often urinary frequency, urgency and hesitancy. Historically, these conditions have been given many different names.  As a result, they have been thought to have numerous causes. 

In the majority of cases, doctors can find little or no physical basis for the symptoms and most or all tests usually come back normal. In this book, we will demonstrate that there is a simple physical basis for the symptoms and that the seemingly wide array and variability of the symptoms are simply idiosyncratic expressions of the same underlying problem in both men and women. A treatment protocol has been developed, called the Wise-Anderson Protocol . We no longer treat the symptoms; instead we treat what triggers those symptoms. Our approach substantially reduces or abates symptoms in a large majority of qualifying patients who undertake our full protocol as we have demonstrated in our published research.

In this book we will use the terms, a headache in the pelvis, chronic pelvic pain syndrome(s), chronic pelvic pain, pelvic pain, and CPPS synonymously to refer to all the conditions discussed.

Traditional names and diagnostic categories in women

• Urethral syndrome
• Vulvodynia (vulvar vestibulitis)
• Interstitial cystitis/painful bladder syndrome
• Piriformis syndrome
• Chronic pelvic pain
• Pelvic floor dysfunction
• Levator ani syndrome
• Pudendal neuralgia
• Pelvic floor myalgia
• Chronic pelvic pain
• Dyspareunia

What is common in the different names

The central notion in this book is that there is a common factor that unites the different names: that there is a common effective treatment for many of them; and that the body and the mind are intimately involved in the cause and the treatment.

For many years, chronic pelvic pain syndromes have posed an enigma to the medical community. Nonbacterial prostatitis, for example, has routinely been confused with acute or chronic bacterial prostatitis even though an accurate and easy method for diagnosis has been available for years. At the same time, nonbacterial prostatitis, which makes up the overwhelming number of cases of prostatitis, tends to be regarded by doctors as a kind of wastebasket diagnosis for pelvic symptoms that the doctor does not understand or know how to treat. Gross pathology, as measured by the latest medical instruments, has not been able to explain the degree of suffering caused by these disorders.

What we are proposing in this book is that these conditions are rather like a headache, except the location of the headache is in the pelvis.  Hence A Headache in the Pelvis is our title.  A further implication from the title is that these disorders are problems of chronic muscle tension, which is often the basis of headaches. If chronic pelvic pain syndromes are, in fact, a headache in the pelvis, then treatment needs to be radically different from what has traditionally been followed.

A Headache in the Pelvis is the name we are giving to chronic pelvic pain syndromes where no gross pathology has been found. These syndromes often include pain and dysfunction related to urination, defecation, and sexual activity. This discomfort or pain and dysfunction occur in both men and women. One person may experience only one symptom while another may experience all symptoms. Sometimes symptoms inexplicably vary from day to day or week to week.  Symptoms vary, as do their anatomical locations, yet we propose that the trigger for these symptoms is the same and a common effective treatment may exist for all of them.