Millions of Women Live With Pelvic Floor Problems. A New Documentary Asks Why.

"The Living Body: It's time to talk about Fascia" — now on YouTube

NY, UNITED STATES, June 9, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Up to one in two women experience pelvic floor dysfunction at some point in their lives, according to Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen). In June 2025 the authority issued the country's first national guidelines on the condition, calling it a complex and often taboo public health problem — and warning that women are too often told their symptoms are "normal" after childbirth or with age.

The same pattern appears across the UK. A 2023 survey of 2,000 women for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists found around 60% had at least one symptom of poor pelvic floor health, 69% had never discussed it with the NHS, and 53% of those with symptoms never sought help — 39% of them because they assumed the symptoms were normal. NICE reports that pelvic organ prolapse is found in up to half of women on examination, and that one in ten will need surgery.

A new documentary, The Living Body: It's time to talk about Fascia, now on YouTube, uses one woman's story to ask a larger question. Fascia is the connective tissue network that wraps every muscle, organ and cell — long treated as unimportant packaging. The film asks: are conditions like these being treated too locally, when the pelvis may need to be understood as part of that larger, connected system?

After a difficult birth, Sanna developed pelvic floor cramping that worsened over years until she could no longer eat or use the toilet normally. She was told her only remaining option was a stoma. After fascia treatment, her symptoms resolved. Her account is one person's experience, not clinical evidence — but it is the kind of story the film argues is far too common.

The film follows fascia researchers exploring that question. In January 2025, an international team — including some featured in the film — published a paper in the Journal of Anatomy (DOI: 10.1111/joa.14212) proposing that fascia be recognised as a distinct system of the body. The filmmakers are explicit that this is a complement to conventional care, not a replacement, and that rigorous clinical trials are still needed.

Among the researchers in the film is Jean-Claude Guimberteau, a French surgeon who spent decades filming fascia inside living tissue: "What we know concerning living people is coming from dead people. It's a sort of very huge paradox." Neil Theise, a New York pathologist and co-author of the paper, asks: "There's a single body — shouldn't we have a single culture of healing?"

The people behind the film have spent more than ten years both spreading knowledge about fascia and working with fascia treatment — and have been struck, again and again, by how little attention the field receives despite growing research.

Watch the documentary The Living Body: It's time to talk about Fascia on YouTube
More information on The Living Body - The Fascia Guide

The Fascia Guide is a knowledge platform on fascia, with articles, a research database, a podcast and the documentary The Living Body. Behind it is a team that has worked for over a decade to make fascia research accessible to the public — and that also develops and provides fascia treatment. The team organised the first Swedish Fascia Convention in 2025.

Hans Bohlin
Fascia Innovation Sweden AB
+46 70 776 04 02
hans@fasciainnovation.com

The Living Body: It's time to talk about Fascia

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