Pelvic Floor – What is It?
Imagine a sling of muscles making a hammock connecting your two sit bones, pubic bone and tail bone. This group of muscles is responsible for:
- Supporting abdominal and pelvic organs
- Controlling continence
- Urinating, defaecation, childbirth and
- sexual activity
Management
Physio management includes:
- Supervised and structured exercise
- program to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles
- Bladder retraining
- Referral to a specialist/surgeon if conservative management is unsuccessful
The pelvic floor is a group of muscles and like the other muscles in the body, is highly adaptive to training, so quite responsive to Physiotherapy resulting in improved pelvic floor control and function.
Your Women’s Health Physio will:
- Teach correct pelvic floor muscle contraction
- Individually tailored treatment plan and exercise program
- Advice regarding symptom management (e.g posture during voiding/defecation, intercourse positions, diet and weight loss)
- Bladder training
- Review diet and fluid intake that may be contributing to your condition.
- Where needed teach pelvic floor muscle relaxation
- Implement Clinical Pilates to transition from pelvic floor exercises to daily function and the return to general exercise.
Pelvic Floor Conditions Commonly Treated:
- Incontinence
- Bladder urgency + frequency
- Prolapse
- Pelvic Floor rehab after having a baby
- Chronic Pelvic Girdle pain
- Constipation
Common Causes of Pelvic Floor Weakness include:
- Childbirth
- Chronic Constipation
- Excessive coughing
- Being overweight
- Persistent Heavy lifting
- Changes in hormonal levels during menopause
- Aging