The pelvic floor muscles (PFM) play a crucial role in maintaining the health and functionality of our bodies. Unfortunately, factors such as aging, childbirth, and menopause can lead to the weakening of these muscles, impacting various aspects of our well-being. In this blog post, we'll explore the importance of pelvic floor health and how strengthening these muscles can enhance both physical and sexual wellness.
Understanding Pelvic Floor Muscles: The pelvic floor muscles provide support to the pelvic organs and are essential for controlling continence. However, due to natural processes like aging, childbirth, and menopause, these muscles can become weakened and deconditioned, leading to issues such as urinary incontinence (UI) in both men and women.
Impact on Urinary Continence: Weak pelvic floor muscles can result in the involuntary loss of urine, affecting daily life and overall confidence. By strengthening these muscles, individuals can regain control over their bladder function and reduce the frequency of UI episodes.
The International Continence Society (ICS) categorizes urinary incontinence into three main subtypes based on its origins.
Stress urinary incontinence (SUI) occurs when activities like coughing, sneezing, or lifting lead to urine leakage due to weakened pelvic floor muscles (PFM), often associated with aging or damage to pelvic support structures from events like childbirth or prostatectomy in men.
Another type is urge incontinence (UUI), characterized by a sudden urge to urinate followed by involuntary leakage due to bladder contractions.
Mixed urinary incontinence (MUI) combines symptoms of both SUI and UUI.
Despite their differences, all three types share a common root cause: weakened PFM unable to properly support the bladder and urethra. Strengthening these muscles through targeted exercises can help alleviate symptoms and improve continence.
Investing in the health of our pelvic floor muscles is vital for maintaining urinary continence, sexual function, and overall quality of life. By incorporating pelvic floor exercises into our daily routine, we can strengthen these essential muscles and experience the numerous benefits they offer.
So, if you can do pelvic floor exercises as part of your daily routine - why the Pelvic Chair?
Well, the chair introduces supramaximal contractions - which are of higher tension than maximum voluntary contractions and therefore cannot be achieved by voluntary muscle action (e.g. Kegel exercise). During one 30minute session, thousands of supramaximal contractions are induced. This is extremely important to PFM re-education as patients are not able to perform these high-repetition-rate patterns of contractions due to PFM weakness.
As a result, the chair directly modifies the muscle structure, inducing growth of myofibrils – muscle fiber hypertrophy; accompanied by the creation of new protein strands and muscle fibers – muscle fiber hyperplasia. Over 28 000 contractions in 30 minutes? That's a win!
Let's prioritize pelvic floor health to unlock a world of wellness and vitality.
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