The pelvic floor is an essential but often overlooked and misunderstood part of the human body. Some people don’t even know they have one.
“We’re never really taught about it,” says Dr Sara Reardon, a board-certified pelvic floor therapist and author of Floored: A Woman’s Guide to Pelvic Floor Health at Every Age and Stage. “We don’t really get any education about how these muscles work and what’s normal.”
The pelvic floor is “a basket of muscles that sits at the base of your pelvis”, Reardon explains. It supports the pelvic organs: the bowel, bladder and uterus or prostate. These in turn support the spine, and play an important role in sexual health and urinary and fecal continence.
When the pelvic floor is working well, we tend to take it for granted, says Dr Ekene A Enemchukwu, a urogynecologist and director of urology at the Stanford Pelvic Health Center. But when it is not functioning correctly, “it can significantly impact functionality and quality of life,” she says.
