Transcript

BAZ MOFFAT

So this is a female pelvis. And the pelvic floor sits underneath and it attaches to a woman’s pubic bone at the front and comes all the way underneath and attaches to a coccyx at the back. And you can see here that there are-- it looks like two holes, but there are actually three. So there’s the vagina, the urethra, and then there’s the anus at the back.

And what I think is really important, which you can see on this is there’s a lot of muscle around the back passage. So it’s not just all about the front. When you’re learning to connect, we need the whole of the pelvic floor to be involved. A healthy pelvic floor should do what you want your body to be doing.

Now everybody should be able to have a pelvic floor that can hold strength for 10 seconds. So when you’re doing your exercises, you want it to be able to lift for 10 seconds. But then you also want it to be able to keep you dry when you’re doing whatever exercise you’re doing.

So if you walk that’s what you want you keep dry doing that. But if you’re doing park runs or if you’re playing competitive hockey, or netball or a competitive sprinter, then the pelvic floor needs to be able to keep you dry when you’re doing those activities.

So there are certain really obvious things like laughing, coughing, sneezing, which many women will be aware that it affects their pelvic floor. So your pelvic floor should be able to resist the increase in abdominal pressure when you’re laughing, coughing, sneezing. But it should also be able to resist the pressure from below when you’re jumping, landing, running, whatever form that takes. And so a healthy pelvic floor will be able to withstand the pressure that you’re creating within your body.

The main sign of pelvic floor dysfunction is leaking urine. And that might be when you laugh, cough, sneeze, or taking part in sport or exercise. Although it’s not life threatening and it doesn’t feel like an injury, it can really affect women’s enjoyment of sport and many women will give up sport because of this.

The other signs of dysfunction are urge incontinence. It’s not because of impact, it’s because you just can’t hold on any longer and it might be when you arrive home and you put a key in the door and then you just have this irresistible urge to empty your bladder and you don’t quite make it to the toilet.

And other signs of pelvic floor dysfunction may be pain in your pelvis, might be feelings of heaviness, or dragging feelings. But any of these signs are just really clear indications that your pelvic floor is not doing what it should do and you should go and get some help.