What is your Pelvic Floor?

Both men and women have pelvic floor muscles.

Your pelvic floor is a sheet of muscle that is as large as two hands cupped together.
It stretches from your front or pubic bone to your tailbone and stretches from the left to the right sitting bone.

Your pelvic floor surrounds the outlet of your bladder and bowel.

What does it do?

It helps you control your bladder and bowel and influences your sexual feeling. 

When you contract your pelvic floor muscles you retract your penis and squeeze and lift your bottom.  This closes your urethra and anus. 

When you exercise, cough, sneeze or laugh your pelvic floor automatically lifts and closes to hold in bladder and bowel contents.

When you urinate or have a bowel motion it fully relaxes and opens.

Radical Prostatectomy

When your prostate is removed or irradiated the bladder neck muscles become ineffective as they are partially removed and or alseep due to various levels of nerve injury.  The pelvic floor muscle known as the sphincter of the urethra will need to compensate for this muscle to help your contro urine.

These sphincter exercises are routinely taught to prepare your muscles for the increased load they will experience. 

Your instructons for this is to retract, draw your penis inwards and hold it for a long as you can up to 60 seconds. You then rest for at least 10 seconds and repeat this until your muscles are tired. You will also be asked to do quick pulses 10 in a row at the end of each session. Your physiotherapist will advise you of your programme based on your individual situation. 

Bowel Urgency and Incontinence

Bowel urgency and incontinence can be due to injury or weakness of the pelvic floor muscles. These muscles act as a gate your can close to keep in a bowel movement.  They also act as the breaks for an overly active gut. Your physiotherapist will show you how to exercise these muscles to improve bowel control.

The video below describes how to do pelvic floor exercise to improve strength. However sometimes the pelvic floor muscles can be overly tight and cause pelvic pain and constipation.

Pain

Many men experience anal, testicle, penis and deep pelvic pain which can be caused by tension in their pelvic floor muscles.  Your physiotherapist can show you ways to relax your pelvic floor muscles.

Constipation

Difficult defaecation can be due to dietary problems, fluid and reduced activity. More often though it can be due to an overly tense pelvic floor.  Your physiotherapist can show you ways to relax your pelvic floor muscles.