The pelvic floor is made up of the diaper-like perineal muscles that surround and hold all the organs of the pelvic cavity: vagina, bladder, anus, uterus, and urethra. From our 40s/50s they lose their tone and strength if we do not take care of them.
Their main function is to hold and give support to all those pelvic organs but, with time, pregnancies and the pressure to which we put these tissues when sneezing, coughing, laughing, urinating or defecating and exerting physical power, they lose their tonicity and we start to suffer some problems such as incontinence, (with more or less loss of urine depending on the person), organs downfall, prolapse, etc.
Menopause does not help since there is a loss of collagen that prevents the tissues from having tone, looking taut and healthy; wrinkles come out and the skin falls out when we get older. We can see this clearly in the face and skin but it also affects the internal tissues.
Children delivery promote hypotrophy-low tone- of these muscles, not only because of the pressure at the time of the delivery where the baby -as he goes through- stretches, tears, and breaks some of those tissues that must hold and protect the pelvic cavity.
On top of all, women have two holes that men do not have, the vagina and the urethra. Let’s just say we have a quasi-horizontal muscle holding up to a lot of pressure every day, but right in the middle two holes. It is like having a broken sheet, sooner or later the areas around this tears will be weaker and this obviously will make us much more vulnerable to hold the organs and manage all the internal pressures (men also suffer from pelvic floor in the form of inguinal hernia and in the peritoneum as hiatus hernia)
Specific techniques can really improve this and many other related conditions like them.
Hypolates (low pressure Pilates) and Kegel methods are very effective. All the aforementioned have to be supervised by a professional of course.
Suffering in silence is not the solution. Women power always!