Why having a healthy pelvic floor is so important!
Have you heard of Kegel exercises?
Everybody has a pelvic floor. This is gender neutral, but women tend to talk more about it because our pelvic floor has one more opening than men, which makes it more prone to weakness.
What is the purpose of the pelvic floor?
The pelvic floor muscles support your organs, like the bladder, bowel, and uterus. A healthy pelvic floor prevents incontinence (peeing or pooing in your pants when you sneeze, cough, laugh, jump, or run) and prolapse, and it’s also important in sexual function.
When your pelvic floor doesn’t work properly (not able to relax or contract as it’s supposed to), it can create a wide variety of symptoms, including constipation, straining to defecate, having urine or stool leakage, and experiencing a frequent need to pee.
Pain or throbbing during or after sex can also be connected to pelvic floor dysfunction. Over our lifetimes, the pelvic floor can be weakened through pregnancy, childbirth, prostate cancer, obesity, chronic constipation, heavy lifting, high impact exercises, chronic coughing from smoking or health problems, aging, and menopause.
Prolapsed uterus
I’ve had three different women in a week share with me that they had a prolapsed uterus — and one was an older woman that hadn’t even had children. A prolapsed uterus is when your pelvic floor muscles and ligaments stretch and weaken and can no longer support the uterus. As a result, the uterus slips down into or comes out of the vagina. A former nurse told me that this was frequent in the days when women had multiple children and large families. After hearing these stories, I wanted to know more about pelvic floor health.
As I started to learn about the pelvic floor, I was surprised to find out that because so many muscles attach to the tailbone and pelvis, including vaginal, anal, abdominal, gluteal, and hip muscles, issues affecting the pelvic muscles can cause problems in other areas of the body, such as the lower back and hips.
Have you ever heard of a pelvic floor physiotherapist or consulted one?
In Europe, every woman is assessed and treated if needed by a pelvic floor physio after giving birth. This is done as a preventative measure, and I wish it was done in Canada as well. I hadn’t heard of it during my first and second pregnancies. It was only much later that I started hearing about it, and now there are many clinics offering and even specializing in pelvic floor physiotherapy.
I saw a pelvic floor physiotherapist for the first time during my third pregnancy, at the age of 42. Because I was pregnant, they only did an external exam. The physiotherapist used special sensors and a computer monitor to display information about muscle function and contraction. It was helpful to see the muscle contractions and it gave me direct “feedback” on the contractions I was doing.
Most of us know about Kegel exercises, which are pelvic floor exercises, but I never knew whether I was doing it properly or not. So, to have this direct feedback provided by the computer was amazing. I found that I was able to engage my pelvic floor while keeping glutes and abs relaxed, but couldn’t hold contractions at all. I couldn’t really control the contractions either, to either engage strongly and hold, or engage slowly and release slowly.
You can even make it fun!
This is when I discovered the Perifit exerciser. It’s a device that almost looks like a dildo, but it’s a sensor you put into your vagina that is connected via Bluetooth to an app on your phone. You play video games to train and track your progress! The games are simple and all they do is get you to do different contractions while playing. I can now do 10 minutes of Kegel exercises easily, instead of trying to do them 5 –10 a day and forgetting to do them at all!
What I also like about Perifit is that you can try it for 100 days and return it for a full refund if you don’t like it. I have 20% discount code if you want to order it through me:
http://perifitcanada.refr.cc/veroniquerioux
If you’d like help with pelvic floor exercises, talk to me about my Personal Training Intro Package. You’ll get:
- Personal assessment and physical evaluation
- Goal setting
- Customized training program based on your fitness level and goals
- One hour of personal training