What We Treat

Constipation & IBS treatment in North Liberty.

Straining. Bloating. Urgency that decides your morning for you. Physical therapy doesn’t replace your GI care. It looks at the part nobody checked: how your pelvic floor and your gut actually move.

Straining Bowel urgency Never finished Book My Free Consult

Sound Familiar?

Does this sound like you?

  • Straining hard and still not feeling finished
  • Changing position, or pressing with your hand, to have a bowel movement
  • Bloating and belly pain that build through the day
  • Urgency that sends you hunting for a bathroom with no warning
  • Days of nothing, then a day where everything happens at once
  • Being told it’s just IBS, and to go manage your stress

Two or more? Keep reading.

Why It Happens

Your gut is not the only thing involved.

To empty, your pelvic floor has to release at the exact moment your abdomen pushes. In a lot of people it does the opposite and tightens under pressure. That is a coordination problem, and no amount of fiber fixes coordination. Add ribs that have stopped moving with your breath, hips and a lower back that have been guarding, and a nervous system running hot, and the gut ends up taking the blame for mechanics. And straining is not neutral. Pushing hard against a floor that will not release, year after year, loads the pelvis in a way it was never built for.

Here is where we are careful. Constipation and IBS are medical diagnoses, and physical therapy is not a treatment for underlying gastrointestinal disease. Keep your physician and your GI team. What we work on is the mechanical and nervous system side: pelvic floor coordination, abdominal and rib mobility, breathing, how you sit on the toilet, and how your system handles pressure and stress. That work sits alongside your medical care, not instead of it.

You have already cut the foods, bought the powder, and read the entire internet about this. That is exactly the kind of patient who does well here. Dr. Alex Furtado, DPT, CPPC, leads pelvic health at Motion Matters, with more than a decade across orthopedics, sports physical therapy and pelvic health. It starts with a cause-first evaluation, one-on-one with a licensed physical therapist. An internal assessment is one option, never a requirement: it gets explained first, you can decline it, and you can stop at any point. You are in control the whole time.

A person standing outside a bathroom holding their stomach

The Honest Truth

Waiting doesn’t make it wait on you.

If you keep waiting

  • The rest of your body starts compensating, and the compensations start hurting too
  • Flare-ups get closer together, and take longer to settle each time
  • You move less to avoid the pain, which weakens the exact things that were protecting you

If you start this week

  • Visit one is a cause-first evaluation, and you leave knowing what we found
  • Hands-on treatment starts the same day, not after a second appointment
  • You get a plan with an endpoint: a real one, not an open tab of visits

Nobody regrets starting too early. Plenty of people tell us they wish they had come in sooner.

How We Fix It

The same four phases. Built for bowel mechanics.

Every plan has an endpoint. Here’s what the four phases look like for constipation and IBS, alongside your medical care.

Weeks 1–2

Pain

Take the pressure down.

Abdominal and rib work, breath retraining and nervous system down-regulation ease the bloating, cramping and guarding, starting your very first visit.

Weeks 2–6

Prime

Teach the coordination.

Your pelvic floor learns to release on the push instead of clamping down, with positioning and breath that make emptying possible without straining.

Weeks 6–10

Perform

Build a routine that holds.

Timing, movement, hydration habits and gentle abdominal work get built into a day you can actually repeat, including workdays and travel days.

Weeks 10+

Prevent

Make it predictable.

You leave knowing your own flare pattern and what to do first: that’s the endpoint, and your GI care carries on right alongside it.

The staff were extremely helpful and went the extra mile to ensure I reached full recovery.

Jenn B. · on what the care is like · Google review

Phase one: settle the bloating, the cramping and the guarding

Phase four: a routine that holds, and a flare plan you run yourself

Constipation & IBS Pain to Prevent

Questions, Answered

What people ask before booking for bowel symptoms.

No. An internal assessment is one option among several, and it is always your choice. Your therapist explains what it involves and why it might help before anything happens, and you can decline it, pause it, or change your mind partway through. Plenty of first visits are history, breathing, posture, hip and movement testing, with no internal work at all. Nothing happens without your consent, and you stay in control the whole time.

No, and it should not. Constipation and IBS are medical diagnoses, and physical therapy is not a treatment for underlying gastrointestinal disease. Keep your physician and your GI team. What physical therapy adds is the mechanical side: pelvic floor coordination, abdominal and rib mobility, breathing, how you sit on the toilet, and how your system handles pressure and stress. If your workup gave you a label but nothing to do about the mechanics, that is the gap this fills.

A full plan for constipation & IBS runs through all four phases, Pain, Prime, Perform, and Prevent, and how long that takes depends on how long you’ve been dealing with it. Either way, you get a plan with an endpoint: you’ll always know which phase you’re in and what’s left, not an open-ended string of appointments. Your GI care carries on alongside it.

Book Your Visit

Ready when you are.

Request a time and a real person calls you back. No phone tree. No ‘someone will reach out.’ Just a plan.

  • Hours Mon-Fri: 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
  • (319) 382-2743 Prefer to talk now? Call us.
  • No referral needed in Iowa

4.9 · 79 Google reviews

Typical response: under 2 business hours

Step 1 of 5

So we know who to look for when you walk in.

Visit Us

Care this good, this close.