What is pelvic floor and how can physiotherapy help me?

Would it shock you to learn that approximately 50% of humans end their lives in diapers, or that some spend upwards of $1,000 a year on urinary incontinence pads?

Why? All this is due to pelvic floor disfunction. The pelvic floor is like any other area of the body and is impacted by ageing, childbirth, poor posture, surgical intervention, hormone shifts in menopause for women or prostate issues for men. Just like an ankle sprain, from time to time it needs attention and rehabilitation.

How do we do this? Pelvic Health with our Physiotherapists can help to assess and identify what issues are occurring, and work with you to resolve them and retrain your pelvic floor to resume normalcy and optimal performance.

At Agile, our Pelvic Health practitioners are Physiotherapists who are highly specialized and have undergone extensive extra training. These practitioners are trained to do external assessments of the skin, fascia, and muscles of the abdomen, lower back and groin. There is also an internal component to the exam which is done via a digital (finger) vaginal and/or rectal exam.

These assessments are in order to ascertain if your pelvic floor is tight or weak. A tight pelvic floor can contribute to urinary frequency and urgency. It can also make urination painful or incomplete, and can be responsible for you waking up during the night with a need to pee. Moreover, it can contribute to urinary incontinence (when you just can’t make it to the washroom). A tight pelvic floor also contributes to constipation, straining during bowel movements and painful bowel movements.

A tight pelvic floor can also present as pain with penetration, inability to have vaginal penetration, pain with or inability to orgasm, and pain with sexual stimulation. In men, it can also present as painful erections and premature ejaculation. Increased pelvic floor tension can also be a reason for lower back pain, coccyx or hip pain as well as abdominal pain.

If you are experiencing weak pelvic floor muscles you may complain of leaking urine or pelvic organ prolapse, which is when one of the pelvic organs starts to shift out of place. This contributes to heaviness or bulging at the vaginal or rectal opening. This is commonly diagnosed with women post pregnancy, however prolapse can occur due to many different reasons and at various ages.

 Neither a weak or tight pelvic floor are normal, and both can be resolved with Pelvic Health Physiotherapy.