Abstract
The aim of this work was to analyze pelvic floor muscle activity through intravaginal perineometry. We focus on the increase due to phasic muscular activity, which short-term rises above the basal tonic activity.
The functional continuity of postural and respiratory function is confirmed by a number of studies. This is the reason why we were interested first of all in the difference between the values of the pressure in the spontaneous breathing of the measured person and the pressure increased values of the voluntary deeper breath.
We confirmed a statistically significant increase in pelvic floor muscle activity at deep respiration compared to resting breathing at different breathing depths at the same position (light, standing). Our measurements also showed that the phase activity of the pelvic floor muscles is statistically significantly higher in the deep breathing than the one measured after a minute running.
Consequences for physiotherapeutic practice and choice of exercise procedures may have a tendency to see that the response to spontaneous or reflex breathing is different than the voluntary one. A specific situation is a cough that causes a short-term increase in pelvic floor muscle activity that clearly exceedes all other observed situations.