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Importance of Kegel Exercises

Your pelvic muscles need to be healthy and kept in the best condition for various reasons. Kegel exercises constitute a routine that is designed to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. There are also a few sets of Kegel exercisers, devices, that are designed to help women properly exercise their pelvic muscles.

Pelvic muscles

The pelvis is the region between your legs or thighs. This is where your reproductive organs are located. A pelvic floor is a group of flexible muscles, forming a sling that holds up your bladder, your bowels and in case of women, the womb.

As you grow older, like other parts of the body, the pelvic floor muscles can also weaken. This means they no longer provide that firm support for the bowels and other organs as they used to do. Weakened pelvic floor muscles can also increase your risk for pelvic organ prolapse (POP). The weakening of pelvic muscles can also be caused by childbirth, a cesarean section or other surgery in the pelvic region.

The most common problem caused by weak pelvic muscles is incontinence, an inability to control the passage of urine. In such a situation, you may uncontrollably pass urine when you laugh, cough, sneeze or in other ways apply pressure on your bladder.

Kegel exercises

These exercises involve contracting and relaxing the pelvic floor muscles. This routine to train and strengthen the pelvic floor muscles was designed and described by Arnold Kegel in 1948. Along with the simple exercise routine, some tools were also recommended by Kegel to help women exercise their muscles properly.

Kegel exercises help improve bladder control and prevent urinary incontinence. They can strengthen the pelvic muscles and help prevent pelvic organ prolapse. They are said to improve sexual health. Kegel exercises can also help women prepare and strengthen their pelvic muscles for childbirth.

The exercises were designed to tone the pubococcygeus muscles. This muscle stretches from the tailbone to the pubic bone. It constitutes the pelvic floor, holding up the pelvic organs. Pelvic floor exercises not only strengthen this muscle but the entire pubic diaphragm (levator ani). This consists of the pubococcygeus, puborectalis and iliococcygeus muscles.

How to do Kegel exercises?

To get the right benefits from Kegel exercises, you need to rightly identify the muscles you need to exercise. To do this, while you are urinating, try to stop the flow for a second. If you succeed, you should feel the pelvic muscles tighten. Relax the muscles and repeat again.

Do this only to correctly identify the muscles to target when you begin your Kegel routine. Do not make it a habit to stop the urine in mid-flow. This can lead to problems like infections of the urinary tract.

Once you know which muscles to target, start exercising them. Begin with a 3-seconds routine. That is, contract the muscles for 3 seconds and then relax them for 3 seconds. Repeat this routine ten times. You can gradually increase the time to 10 seconds each way and repeat the routine ten times. Once you have done it for a long period of time, you can do these exercises anytime, like when you are commuting, when you are having lunch, etc. The routine is subtle and will not be obvious to other people.

Kegel exercisers

While you can do Kegel exercises without any aid, a set of devices are available in the market for women as they may need some help in exercising the correct set of muscles. These include:

A small ball, ranging in diameter from 20 to 35 mm. These balls are available in different weights. These are held in the vagina as you do the exercises
Vaginal cones and barbells are inserted into the vagina. Holding them inside and applying pressure to them during the routine is said to be helpful in toning the pelvic muscles
Rubber balls with a gauge that provides a feedback of the pressure applied on them can be helpful in guiding women on following a proper routine
There are electrical Kegel exercisers that administer a tiny amount of current through an internal probe. This current helps in the Kegel routine by causing the nearby muscles to contract
Progressive resistance vaginal exercisers provide the necessary pressure that helps confirm that the correct muscles are being targeted when performing the exercise

While these Kegel exercisers can be helpful, clinical research published in a journal states that the simple pelvic floor exercises without any devices are the most effective way to tone pelvic muscles. However, several clinical trials have confirmed that the progressive resistant Kegel exercisers that provide a feedback are also very effective. These are the best Kegel exercisers which can help women target the right muscles and helps them tone and strengthen their pelvic floor muscles in a proper way.

Kegel exercises can strengthen pelvic muscles. They help cure problems like incontinence, prevent pelvic organ prolapse and generally tone and train the muscles so that they do not weaken and lead to other problems. The Kegel exercises are simple to do once you practice them. For women, many Kegel exercisers are available to aid them while performing this routine and to target the correct muscles.

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