Getting To Know Your Pelvic Floor: Why Pelvic Health Therapy May Just Be For You

Everyone has a pelvic floor, including you. So, let’s get to know it!

Your pelvic floor is made up of three layers of muscles and is supported by several ligaments, fascia, and bones. The pelvic region helps your body perform several daily tasks:

1. Bladder And Bowel Control

Your pelvic floor muscles include sphincters that help you hold back or empty your urine and stool. These muscles help prevent undesirable issues such as unwanted urine or fecal leakage, pain with emptying, urinary retention, and constipation.

2. Sexual Function

Your pelvic floor muscles help you participate in sexual activity. When these muscles are working correctly, they allow you to have pain-free sex. They also help you achieve a clitoral or penile erection and reach climax.

3. Support Internal Organs

The pelvic floor muscles support the bladder, rectum, uterus, prostate, and other internal organs are supported at the base of your trunk. The muscles help keep the organs in proper position inside the body.

4. Pressure Management

The pelvic floor sits at the base of your trunk, working with your diaphragm, abdominals, back, and hip muscles to support the trunk. The pelvic floor muscles are active whenever you jump, run, cough, yell, etc. During these daily tasks or athletic activities, they help your body tolerate the rise in pressure and force, which affects your body’s function.

5. Stability

Your pelvic floor, hip, core, and back muscles give your pelvis stability in order to walk, run, jump, and move.

6. Pregnancy And Childbirth

During pregnancy, the pelvic floor helps support the uterus as the fetus grows. During childbirth, the muscles surrounding the vaginal opening relax to allow the baby to exit during vaginal delivery.

The pelvic floor is very talented—It does a lot of work to help you live a happy and healthy lifestyle. If you experience pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD), the side effects can severely impact your day-to-day life. But you are not alone. When it comes to urinary dysfunction, for example, studies show that as many as 61.8% of cisgender women in the United States experience unwanted urinary leakage, and 1 in 8 cisgender men may undergo treatment for prostate cancer, which often results in unwanted urinary leakage^1,2.

If you are pregnant or postpartum, or if you are experiencing PFD such as urinary leakage, constipation, pelvic organ prolapse, hernia, or painful sex, then you may benefit from seeing a pelvic health therapist. Athletico’s pelvic health therapists are specialized in assessing and treating your whole body, including your pelvic floor muscles. Connect with a pelvic health therapist in order to take back control of your pelvic floor function and improve your quality of life.

Find a Pelvic Health Therapist Near You

*Per federal guidelines, beneficiaries of plans such as Medicare, Medicaid, Tricare, VHA and other federally funded plans are not eligible for free assessments.

The Athletico blog is an educational resource written by Athletico employees. Athletico bloggers are licensed professionals who abide by the code of ethics outlined by their respective professional associations. The content published in blog posts represents the opinion of the individual author based on their expertise and experience. The content provided in this blog is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice and should not be relied on for making personal health decisions.

References:
1. American Cancer Society. (2024, January 19). Key statistics for prostate cancer. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/types/prostate-cancer/about/key-statistics.html#:~:text=About%201%20in%208%20men,to%20develop%20in%20older%20men
2. Patel, Ushma J. MD; Godecker, Amy L. PhD; Giles, Dobie L. MD, MS, MBA; Brown, Heidi W. MD, MAS. Updated Prevalence of Urinary Incontinence in Women: 2015–2018 National Population-Based Survey Data. Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery 28(4):p 181-187, April 2022. | DOI: 10.1097/SPV.0000000000001127