In thousands of social media posts, women are urged to exercise their pelvic floor\u2014sometimes via musical \u201csqueeze-along\u201d routines or inserting vaginal weights. The posts describe the pelvic floor as a sling below the torso and claim that Kegel exercises can cure problems involving the bladder, bowels, or reproductive organs.<\/p>\n
But experts say this two-dimensional vision is too simple. Pelvic floor muscle strengthening does benefit some women<\/a> with pelvic floor problems, but it doesn\u2019t help every condition or every body.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can have the strongest pelvic floor muscles in the world but lack connective tissue supports for those muscles. Or you could have really strong muscles, but the sphincter muscle inside your urethra is not strong,\u201d says Linda McLean<\/a>, a pelvic health researcher at the University of Ottawa. For example, her research found that women whose bladder sits lower in the pelvis are less likely to benefit<\/a> from strengthening routines.<\/p>\n Complicating the picture, some women have pelvic pain because their muscles are too taut, not too loose, says Leslie Rickey<\/a>, a urogynecological researcher at the Yale School of Medicine. \u201cWhen someone has tightness, strengthening exercises can actually worsen the problem,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Researchers are now gaining a fuller understanding of just how complex and dynamic the female pelvis is, encompassing extensive muscle groups, nerves, connective tissue, and bones. \u201cIt\u2019s a three-dimensional structure. There are areas where muscles are broad, areas where they’re thicker, areas where they’re wrapping around organs, and others where they form a kind of shelf,\u201d says Steven Abramowitch<\/a>, a bioengineer and pelvic researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. The pelvis is also continually subjected to forces from gravity, movement, stretching, and pressure from the bladder and bowels\u2014not to mention pregnancy and childbirth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In thousands of social media posts, women are urged to exercise their pelvic floor\u2014sometimes via musical \u201csqueeze-along\u201d routines…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":843542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[4528,337,97,141459,132275,357125,144069,357126,132277,132278,290186,357127,144070],"class_list":["post-843541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-womens-health","tag-fitness","tag-health","tag-kegel-exercises","tag-pelvic-floor","tag-pelvic-floor-dysfunction","tag-pelvic-floor-exercises","tag-pelvic-floor-therapy","tag-pelvic-organ-prolapse","tag-pelvic-pain","tag-stress-incontinence","tag-urge-incontinence","tag-urinary-incontinence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}