Being aware of how your gut health is functioning is an important part of your whole body health, along with being an important part of your pelvic floor health. Being constipated, or having diarrhea on a regular bases puts additional strain, pressure, and stress on your pelvic floor.

All these overlapping pillars influence how our body functions, including the pelvic floor. This is where we can start to connect the dots between our biology, psychology, sociology, and our pelvic floor. Our pelvic floor function is influenced by all these pillars, but also influences the pillars as well.  

Summer is upon us, and mother earth has turned the temperature up, wayyy up…. as the body heats up, so do our cortisol levels. Cortisol is our body’s stress hormone; more stress = more cortisol. Hot conditions act as a stressor to the body, which responds by producing and secreting more cortisol.

About 50% of women experience incontinence, prolapse, pelvic or back pain, or other symptoms due to pelvic floor dysfunction, sometimes even before childbirth. Pregnancy changes a lot of things in a mother’s life, including her pelvic floor.

Our muscles play a key role in our health. They allow our skeletal system to move, help us experience day to day life, and our organs are also dependent on muscle movement.

When we look at the connection between hormones and muscle integrity, we can see that there is a profound relationship between the estrogen and progesterone levels on muscular synthesis. there are estrogen receptors located throughout the pelvic floor muscles, bladder, vagina.

The holidays can be a time of wonder, joy, celebration, reconnecting with loved ones, and sometimes a little sprinkle of stress. The negative effects of stress run from your head to your toes. Headaches? Upset stomach? Picking up all the sick germs? Not sleeping well? Tight muscles? Easily fatigued? Pelvic floor dysfunction?