Pelvic Floor Health Survey
Pelvic floor exercises is the tensing and relaxing of the pelvic floor muscles. A Cochrane Review has shown that they treat or improve symptoms of incontinence [2]. The aim of pelvic floor exercises is to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. There are so many benefits to this, including a huge impact to quality of life [3], work, family and relationships. Unfortunately, as shown in the statistics, many women have not been taught how to correctly do pelvic floor exercises, nor understand its importance.
The findings of RCOG’s report that only 22% of women do their pelvic floor exercises regularly! Additionally, over half (53%) of the women who had experienced symptoms of pelvic floor dysfunction did not seek help from a healthcare professional.
Our ethos is that women’s health matters. But why does it matter?
For reasons listed above, women should always have access to correct and valuable information on how to maintain good health. Information on how lifestyle changes, pregnancy and childbirth can impact the pelvic floor can help women manage weak pelvic floor symptoms. Read below to see what our Director of Patient Relations had to say about the statistics:
I talk to women on a very regular basis that have been unsure as to what help is available to them to support their pelvic floor. Consequently, very little education is given following child birth, natural deliveries and caesarian delivery as they can weaken the pelvic floor muscles and lead to weakness followed by stress incontinence and sexual dissatisfaction.
Only a small number of ladies admit to doing their pelvic floor exercises at all and certainly not regularly but once a weakness is apparent pelvic exercises are more difficult to do correctly so patients lose interest in maintaining a good routine. During our NuV treatments we offer pelvic floor exercise advise and the two work brilliantly together.
In our clinic, we educate women on what the pelvic floor is, how to correctly do exercises and other ways to strengthen it. Our exclusive Nu-V treatment helps with mild to moderate prolapses. You can find more information about Nu-V here.
We join the RCOG in calling for women who are suffering from weak pelvic floor symptoms to not be embarrassed and to seek help.
To read RCOG’s article, please click here.
_______
1 RCOG, 2023, ‘RCOG calling for action to reduce number of women living with poor pelvic floor health’, Accessed 22 March 2023, https://www.rcog.org.uk/news/rcog-calling-for-action-to-reduce-number-of-women-living-with-poor-pelvic-floor-health/
2 Dumoulin C, Cacciari LP, Hay-Smith EJC. Pelvic floor muscle training versus no treatment, or inactive control treatments, for urinary incontinence in women. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2018 Oct 4;10(10):CD005654
3 Ptak M, Ciećwież S, Brodowska A, Starczewski A, Nawrocka-Rutkowska J, Diaz-Mohedo E, Rotter I. The Effect of Pelvic Floor Muscles Exercise on Quality of Life in Women with Stress Urinary Incontinence and Its Relationship with Vaginal Deliveries: A Randomized Trial. Biomed Res Int. 2019 Jan 6;2019:5321864
How we can help
We have experienced nurses who will take the time to provide you with relevant information and answer any questions you have. We want to work with you to better your health. Initial appointments are 45 minutes long allowing you enough time to speak to your assigned practitioner
Follow us on social media
Keep updated with our events, offers and more!
The ability to speak to someone who was not only knowledgeable, but sympathetic and completely understanding of the menopause was brilliant. The GP and NHS are superb, but they have limited time and resources for this issue, so having alternative option available has been an absolute godsend.
Keran made me feel comfortable and explained all the procedures to me very happy with the service