Our Greatest Wealth Is Health

Kegel Facts

Andrew Siegel MD (11/8/14)

• Arnold Kegel (1894-1981) was a gynecologist who taught at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. He was singularly responsible in the late 1940s for popularizing pelvic floor exercises in women in order to improve their sexual and urinary health, particularly after childbirth. His legacy is the pelvic floor exercises that bear his name, known as “Kegels.”

• Arnold Kegel invented a resistance device called the perineometer that was placed in the vagina to measure the strength of pelvic floor muscle contractions.

• Arnold Kegel did not invent pelvic floor exercises, but popularized them in women. Pelvic floor muscle exercises have actually been known for thousands of years, Hippocrates and Galen having described them in ancient Greece and Rome, respectively, where they were performed in the baths and gymnasiums.

• Kegel exercises are often used in women for stress incontinence (leakage with exercise, sneezing, coughing, etc.) and pelvic relaxation (weakening of the support tissues of the vagina causing dropped bladder, dropped uterus, dropped rectum, etc.).

• Arnold Kegel wrote four classic articles: The Non-surgical Treatment of Genital Relaxation; Progressive Resistance Exercise in the Functional Restoration of the Perineal Muscles; Sexual Functions of the Pubococcygeus Muscle; The Physiologic Treatment of Poor Tone and Function of the Genital Muscles and of Urinary Stress Incontinence.

• Kegel wrote: “Muscles that have lost tone, texture and function can be restored to use by active exercise against progressive resistance since muscles increase in strength in direct proportion to the demands placed upon them.”

• Kegel believed that at least thirty hours of exercise is necessary to obtain maximal development of the pelvic floor muscles.

• Kegel believed that surgical procedures for female incontinence and pelvic relaxation are facilitated by pre-operative and post-operative pelvic floor muscle exercises.

• Kegel believed that well-developed pelvic muscles in females are associated with few sexual complaints and that “sexual feeling in the vagina is closely related to muscle tone and can be improved through muscle education and resistive exercise.” Following restoration of pelvic floor muscle function in women with incontinence or pelvic relaxation, he noted many patients with “more sexual feeling.”

• Kegel believed that impaired function of the genital muscles is rarely observed in tail-wagging animals, suggesting that with constant movement of the tail, the pelvic floor muscles are activated sufficiently to maintain tone or to restore function following injury.

• The pelvic floor muscles form the floor of the all-important core group of muscles.

• The pelvic floor muscles are involved in 3 “S” functions: support of the pelvic organs; sphincter control of the bladder and the bowel; and sexual

• Men have virtually the same pelvic floor muscles as do women with one minor variation: in men the bulbocavernosus muscle is a single muscle vs. in women it has a left and right component as it splits around the vagina.

• Men can derive similar benefits from Kegel exercises in terms of improving their sexual and urinary health as do women.

• Kegel exercises can improve urinary control in men, ranging from stress urinary incontinence that follows prostate surgery, to overactive bladder, to post-void dribbling.

• Kegel exercises can improve sexual function in men, enhancing erections and ejaculation.

• If the pelvic floor muscles are weak and not contracting properly, incontinence and sexual dysfunction can result. If they are hyper-contractile, spastic and tense, they can cause tension myalgia of the pelvic floor muscles, a.k.a. a “headache in the pelvis,” which often negatively affects sexual, urinary and bowel function.

• The pelvic floor muscles contract rhythmically at the time of climax in both sexes. These muscles are the motor of ejaculation, responsible for the forcible ejaculation of semen at sexual climax. Kegel exercises can optimize ejaculatory volume, force and intensity.

• The pelvic floor muscles have an important role during erections, activating and engaging to help maintain penile rigidity and a skyward angling erection. They are responsible for the transformation from a tumescent (softly swollen) penis to a rigid (rock-hard) penis. They exert external pressure on the roots of the penis, elevating blood pressure within the penis so that it is well above systolic blood pressure, creating a “hypertensive” penis and bone-like rigidity.

• The Kegel muscles are located in the perineum, the area between the vagina and anus in a woman and between the scrotum and anus in a man.

• The Kegel muscles are not the thigh muscles (adductors), abdominal muscles (rectus), or buttock muscles (gluteals).

• You know you are doing Kegel exercises properly when you see the base of the penis retract inwards towards the pubic bone and the testicles rise up as you contract your Kegel muscles.

• You know you are doing Kegel exercises properly when you can make your erect penis lift up as you contract your Kegel muscles.

• You know you are doing Kegel exercises properly when you can interrupt your urinary stream as you contract your Kegel muscles.

• The 1909 Gray’s Anatomy referred to one of the male Kegel muscles as the erector penis and another as the ejaculator urine, emphasizing the important role these muscles play in erections, ejaculation, and the ability to push out urine.

• The pelvic floor muscles are 70% slow-twitch fibers, meaning fatigue-resistant and capable of endurance to maintain constant muscle tone (e.g., sphincter function), and 30% fast-twitch fibers, capable of active contraction (e.g., for ejaculation).

• Kegel exercises are safe and non-invasive and should be considered a first-line approach for a variety of pelvic issues, as fit muscles are critical to healthy pelvic functioning.

• The pelvic floor muscles are hidden from view and are a far cry from the external glamour muscles of the body. However, they deserve serious respect because, although not muscles with “mirror appeal,” they are responsible for powerful and beneficial functions, particularly so when intensified by training. Although the PFM are not muscles of glamour, they are our muscles of “amour.”

• The Kegel muscles—as with other muscles in the body—are subject to the forces of adaptation. Unused as intended, they can suffer from “disuse atrophy.” Used appropriately as designed by nature, they can remain in a healthy structural and functional state. When targeted exercise is applied to them, particularly against the forces of resistance, their structure and function, as that of any other skeletal muscle, can be enhanced. Kegel exercises are an important component of Pilates and yoga.

• As Kegel popularized pelvic floor muscle exercises in females in the late 1940’s, so Siegel (rhymes with Kegel) popularized pelvic floor muscle exercises in males in 2014, with a review article in the Gold Journal of Urology entitled: Pelvic Floor Muscle Training in Men: Practical Applications, a book entitled: Male Pelvic Fitness: Optimizing Sexual and Urinary Health, and his work co-creating the Private Gym male pelvic floor exercise DVD and resistance program.

Wishing you the best of health,

http://www.AndrewSiegelMD.com

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Author of Male Pelvic Fitness: Optimizing Sexual and Urinary Health: http://www.MalePelvicFitness.com

Private Gym: http://www.PrivateGym.com – now available on Amazon