The Key to Healing Incontinence

Your pelvic floor is the key to healing incontinence.  Floors create the bottoms of our homes, so it makes sense to use the term floor when describing the muscles that make up the bottom of our pelvic region. Unlike the floors in our homes, our pelvic floor, or core floor, is made of three different layers of muscles and ligaments acting as the support network for all of your pelvic organs including your bladder, uterus, colon, and rectum. Did you know there are actually 10 different muscle groups down there?

Before we can train the pelvic floor muscles properly, it's important to understand a little bit more about them. The first layer is superficial and is made of three different muscles. One of these muscles is responsible for helping to maintain erection during intercourse for both men and women. The second layer is comprised of sphincter muscles, supportive ligaments, and soft tissue structures. The third layer is what most people are referencing when talking about that old school term, the pelvic floor.

Five different muscles make up this layer. If you look at the muscles, they form what looks like a soup bowl. Each of these muscles has a slightly different responsibility and orient themselves in different positions. This design allows the pelvic floor to control a variety of functions.

The muscles in vertical alignment control forward and backward motions of the pelvis. The muscles that orient themselves in a more horizontal position help control the lateral movements of the pelvis. The remaining muscles attach your pelvis to your tailbone and work together for good rotational pelvic movements.

The positioning and design of all this musculature allows them to “turn on like a switch” with the movement of the hips, pelvis, and spine. Movement that “turns on” the muscles most effectively occurs in all three planes of motion—front to back, side to side, and rotating around.

If you have some difficulty moving in one of those planes because of tightness, weakness, pain, fear, or poor habits, any of the core floor musculature can actually start to “turn off”. They become weaker, tighter, or possibly more painful. This can reduce good movement even more, which becomes a vicious cycle.

The pelvic floor often gets blamed for many of the medical diagnoses impacting bladder or bowel health, or sexual function. In many cases it is not the pelvic floor's fault.  Your pelvic floor is completely influenced by everything going on around it. Every part of your body has a responsibility to perform a certain job. When jobs are not being performed optimally, other body parts will be affected.

Treating symptoms without addressing the potential causes in other parts of the body might cause a little improvement, but pelvic floor therapy can create positive, powerful, and long-lasting changes.

Check out our Online Pelvic Floor Course, it's FREE:  My Core Floor | Superior Physical Therapy (thesuperiortherapy.com)

We believe every person deserves that level of success.

Watch the Video below or by clicking here: https://youtu.be/PE0mDbUeKn8

Additional info from Mayo Clinic on Incontinence: Urinary incontinence - Symptoms and causes - Mayo Clinic