Support for NPR and the following message come from Yarl and Pamela Mohn, thanking the people who make public radio great every day and also those who listen.

You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey, it's Mariel.

Okay, so painful sex, urinary leakage, constipation, tailbone pain,

what do these unpleasant experiences have in common? They can all be symptoms of pelvic

floor dysfunction. What is the pelvic floor, you ask? It's a basket of muscles that sits at the

bottom of the pelvis and supports our internal organs. Your pelvic floor helps you pee and poop. It

helps you breathe. It can help you have orgasms. And if you have a vagina, it can help you give birth.

But it's possible, likely even, that no one has ever talked to you about this.

Everyone has a pelvic floor, and we often don't connect with it.

We're never taught about it.

We don't get pelvic floor education growing up.

And many of us don't know that these muscles exist, and therefore, if a problem problem arises how to evaluate for it and then

how to get treatment for it. Sarah Reardon is a pelvic floor physical therapist and author of the

book, Floored, a woman's guide to pelvic floor health at every age and stage. Although this book is

focused on, I say women and people with vaginas in the very beginning,

but I think it's just pelvic health in general is kind of what the hope is that people can

start becoming aware of and proactively caring for.

So many women go to the doctor with pelvic floor dysfunction and come back confused and still

in pain. They might be having painful sex or painful bowel movements.

They might be peeing a little every time they laugh.

And then the doctor says, well, you know, you don't have an infection and you don't have cancer.

...