Steemit Learning Challenge-S27W4; Physiofit; Pelvic Floor Strengthening

Welcome to the 4th week of Steemit Challenge, Season 27. Our beloved mentor, @ashkhan, discussed this week about the pelvic floor, which is very important for the human body.

Pelvic Floor, Muscles, Types, and Causes

The Pelvic Floor

The pelvic floor is an important part of our body that protects, supports, and controls our internal pelvic region organs like the bladder, uterus/prostate, and rectum. It is a group of muscles, ligaments, and tissues. The pelvic floor controls our urinary, fecal incontinence, supports childbirth and much more.

Muscles

The Pelvic Floor is made of various muscles, ligaments and tissues. Despite that, two main muscles play important and key roles.

The Levator Ani

This is more like a group of muscles. Three main muscles are there.

• i. Puboccocygeus - It supports pelvic organs and helps to control the urine flow.
• ii. Iliococcygeus - Maintain fecal incontinence and create a sling around the rectum.
• iii. Puborectalis - Provide lifts and support the pelvic viscera.

Coccygeus

It lies behind the levator ani and supports the pelvic organs and stabilizes the coccyx.

Some other muscles also support and help perform the functions, like the Piriformis and the Obturator internus muscles.

Types

The three main types of the Pelvic Floor are,

Normal Pelvic Floor

Pelvic muscles remain normal in size. It allows the normal functioning of the pelvic floor. Muscles maintain strength and flexibility. All functioning stays normal, like normal bladder and bowel movement.

Hypertonic Pelvic Floor

Pelvic muscles increase and become tight, tense and constantly contracted. It occurred painful urination, constipation, and pain during sex.

Hypotonic Pelvic Floor

It is the opposite of the Hypertonic Pelvic Floor. This time, the pelvic muscle was reduced, and muscle tone became too relaxed and weak. It occurred organ prolapse, fecal incontinence, and urinary incontinence.

Causes

There are so many causes for Pelvic Floor dysfunction, rather than Childbirth and Old age. I will discuss here 4 other causes.

• Chronic Straining - Chronic straining can cause weak pelvic muscles that lead to a Hypotonic Pelvic Floor. Heavy weight lifting, constipation and similar work can cause this.

• Obesity - Obesity increases pressure on pelvic muscles. This is not Rocket Science to understand. This causes weak muscles that lead to a Hypotonic Pelvic Floor.

• Pelvic Injury or Surgery - Pelvic injury or surgery, I mean scar tissues, cause muscle tension that leads to a Hypertonic Pelvic Floor.

• UTI - UTI, aka Urinary Tract Infections, can cause a Hypertonic Pelvic Floor.

Case Study

I would like to share the history of my Grandmother. She is 80+ years old. Mother of 10 children. At this age, she has a problem with her fecal incontinence. She could not hold her urine and stool. It is very common for her. She is old and has had so many childbirths.

In addition to this, she stopped working when she was 60. My mother and other aunties took care of that. For her sedentary lifestyle, her pelvic floor got extra energy to create a problem. Well, this was her story and my case study.

Exercise

As long as I don't have any patients or volunteers to work with, I, myself, performed 3 exercises to strengthen my pelvic floor. These are pelvic tilt, abductor squeeze, and hip bridging exercises.

Pelvic tilt was harder for me. Though I performed well, it is barely noticeable in the video. The other two were easy to perform.

Hip Bridging Exercise