BPH – Kegel Exercises – Overview

Transcript

One form of exercise that we don’t really think of as exercise is strengthening our pelvic floor muscles, Dr. Kegel, a gynecologist, described these years and years ago, and every woman knows what a Kegel exercise is. Some men do and most men don’t, but the idea of a Kegel exercise is simply to strengthen the muscle floor of the pelvis. And the way we do this is by first going to the bathroom, letting a stream flow, and then trying to squeeze that stream off, not using your fingers. If that is performed repeatedly, not necessarily in the bathroom, but when seated, I like telling people to do this in the car, just squeeze and release, that strengthening of the floor of the pelvis, the muscular floor of the pelvis, can result in calming some of the urges down in the bladder. The benefit of repeatedly squeezing this muscle is giving strength to a part of the anatomy that, when stronger, produces a negative feedback on bladder urges. So in some cases, exercising the pelvic floor has some benefit to patients with bladder symptoms.