Pelvic Floor Exercises

Let us introduce your levator ani muscles to you. (See illustrations below.)

Layers of muscles, connective tissue, and a rich nerve system spread across the bottom of your pelvis, supporting your urethra, vagina, and anus and holding up the rest of you. Quite a trick.

Healthy levator ani muscles help keep those “exit” organs healthy and working, tightening them when you need to hold waste in, relaxing them when you want to let it out.

Think of what happens when you sneeze. A single “Achoo!” sends all of your abdominal organs down. Your gravity-defying pelvic floor keeps them up.

Your levator ani muscles are also your muscles of “sexual appreciation,” and keeping them strong and healthy can increase sexual enjoyment, arousal, and lubrication.

It’s vital to keep those muscles, tissues, and nerves healthy.

Why you want to keep your pelvis powerful.

Incontinence is without charm. It can be unnerving, isolating, and depressing. It can rob you of your self-esteem, your sleep, and the intimacy of your sex life. You may become wary of going out and being with people. Sport becomes something you watch, exercise, something you used to do. Lovemaking becomes something uncomfortable to contemplate. Intimate relationships become less intimate. (Somehow snuggling up to someone you love doesn’t have the same appeal when you are afraid something could, at any moment, be dripping.)

Incontinence not only affects you, but everyone close to you. Individuals have it; whole families suffer.

Of all the things to say about incontinence, the most important may be this: Incontinence is unnecessary and probably avoidable. Approximately 80% of people who experience urinary incontinence can cure their condition or improve their symptoms. Help is all around you (see below), and, especially, within yourself. But you have to seek help and dedicate yourself to its—no pun intended—elimination.

Incontinence is the secret epidemic of our era. Millions have it, most don’t talk about it. Many wait years before seeking help. Despite the high success rates in treating incontinence, only one out of twelve people affected seeks help. We know of an older woman—married to a doctor, no less—who experienced incontinence for most of her married life and never mentioned it, not even to her husband.

Let us introduce your levator ani muscles to you.
Pelvic Diagram

Source: Ever Since I Had My Baby, Roger Goldberg, M.D.,M.P.H.

It’s vital to keep those muscles, tissues, and nerves healthy.
Pelvic Diagram

LINKS:
Pelvic Pyramid