The Livy Method Podcast - No One Told You Kegels Might Be Making It Worse

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Leaking when you laugh. Waking up three times a night to pee. Hip pain that won't quit no matter what you try. Sound familiar? Pelvic health specialist Erin Degagne is back, and she's here to tell you what most women aren't being told: these things are fixable and you've probably been given the wrong advice.Gina Livy and Erin dig into why the pelvic floor is almost always tight, not weak; what menopause is doing to your bladder and tissue; how to stop the urgency spiral that makes you sprint for every bathroom and the real role of vaginal estrogen, HRT and sex in pelvic health. This may make you say, "Why did no one tell me sooner?"Resources mentioned today:To find a pelvic health professional in your area: https://pelvichealthsolutions.ca/You will find a Bladder Journal in the Files section of the group and linked here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodspring2026/permalink/830637866584174/A few of Erin's favourite pelvic floor stretches: https://www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodspring2026/permalink/809082598739701/Where to Find Erin:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/squats.and.coffee/Websites: https://lakecountryphysio.com/This episode aligns with day 59 of our Spring 2026 weight loss program. You can find the full video hosted at: www.facebook.com/groups/livymethodspring2026To learn more about The Livy Method, visit livymethod.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm going to be honest with you, this podcast is unapologetically a hot mess because that is what midlife feels like sometimes. Why, though? And how do we make it better? Do we all just need facelifts and g-lp-1s? I mean, let's talk about it. No bullshit, no wellness wangery here because we're trying to make real change and change is hard. But we're in this together. Welcome to the Livy Method podcast.

I wish I could stop getting up in the middle of the night to go pee. I mean, I can't even tell you how many people are dealing with this and want answers to it. Erin DeGagnay is back. She is a pelvic health specialist, physiotherapist. Hi. Hi. How are you? How are you?

Good. You know, we've had this conversation before. And this morning, I was thinking, okay, what's the conversation now? Or are more and more people just having the conversation? Yeah. Like the information is getting out there thankfully. Yeah. Because of people like you, because of the internet, because family physicians are getting more

information. It just takes time, right, for this information to get out there. It's just so great that we're having this conversation, that other people are having the conversation and people will know a little bit more about their body after today. Yeah. So I used to think, I've had four kids, right? So I've, you know, I've had a prolaps, prolapse uterus. I, you know, can't go on a trampoline.

I just thought, honestly, it was because every woman, it was because I've had kids. I grew up with my mom and my aunts who pee when they laugh. And that was just really normal. And that's just how it is. When in reality, yes, that may be how it is, but that doesn't need to be how it is. So one, this, pelvic health is a conversation for everybody. if you have a body, you have a pelvis, you want to know about pelvic health. But also, it's not normal to pee when you laugh.

And yeah, it's not normal. It's very common. But yeah, the misconception is that, yeah, once you have kids or even just as you get older, right? Even seeing, like, I have people come all the time and say, like, I don't want to be in a nursing home and have diapers on. And it's just assumed that that's what's going to happen to you as you get older. But, like, no, it doesn't need to happen. outside of like a bladder issue that's, you know, very serious or like a dementia or something where you're not going to the washroom when you should. You should not have leakage,

urine leakage, stool leakage, ever, men or woman. So yeah, it's for everybody. Men have a pelvic floor too. Yeah, that, that, that diaper aisle is getting bigger and bigger. The diaper aisle is big. Yeah. It's, unfortunately, our society and, it's, women especially have just become, you know, they've just accepted the fact that, okay, this is what I'm going to have to do and I have to buy these pads and they're going to get bigger as time goes on and it is what it is. But it's because they haven't been given the information that they need to know that there's something that you can do about it, that that doesn't, that isn't necessarily a normal thing. And that there's honestly a pretty simple solution to what's happening or like they should be looking

further into things to see why this is happening. Okay. Let's get into that. But before we do, what is the difference between pelvic health issues after childbirth versus a woman through menopause versus just, I don't know any other reason why you might have pelvic health. What's the difference? Yeah. So there's no difference, really. We all have a pelvic floor. It functions to do a lot of things in our body. It helps with bowel and bladder function. It helps with sexual function. It helps to pump fluid out of your pelvis. So men, women, they have a pelvic floor. it can be tight or weak or have other issues because of pregnancy and delivery. But I see people all the time who have never had kids, men, older women who didn't have issues

through their whole life and then they go through menopause and then they have issues. It's often this accumulation of a bunch of different factors that create this tension. So it could be that you have really painful periods and that created a ton of tension. So like PCOS endometriosis and that created all this tension that's now causing these urinary issues or pain with intercourse or all of these other things. Or it could be a low back injury, a hip injury. And these things tend to accumulate over time, which makes it seem like, oh, this is just getting worse as I get older.

But the truth is you've just been through more, right? In the same way that your back hurts more as you get older because you've been through more. But it doesn't mean that these things can't be fixed. It's just kind of this little accumulation. And that can be for so many things. Stress. There's so many things that affect your pelvic floor that, you know,

It's multifacitive. Okay, I want to get into that in a sec, but let's just talk about water to start. Because, you know, people start the program and they're drinking more water than they are used to. And that kind of can really highlight the issue, right? I know when you are dehydrated, that can cause you to go to the bathroom more often until your body is hydrated and used to drinking more water. Some people talk about having a small bladder. How do you know that it's like I'm drinking more water or I'm drinking more water or I'm actually have an issue.

Yeah. So initially, I would say, like, give it a couple weeks. So like the first of which were passed, right? So if you've been drinking a lot of water for the first two weeks of the program and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm up peeing all the time. I'm up three times in the night. If that doesn't change after a couple weeks, your body should kind of figure things out how it's processing this fluid. And it should be like six to eight times in 24 hours that you're peeing. So keeping a bladder diary can be super helpful just to see like how much am I actually peeing. So if that's getting, like if you're always thinking about where you're going to the bathroom, if you are having urgency where you're rushing to get to the bathroom on time, if you're having

any urine leakage, if you are waking up more than once at night to pee, that's all a sign that like, okay, this is not the water, especially after a couple of weeks. There's actually something else going on. Okay. How many, what is normal look like? How many times did you say? Six to eight times in like, like, a couple of, like, a. a 24 hour period is considered normal. There's like little variations, right? If you've had things that

are irritating to your bladder, so like alcohol, carbonated beverages, spicy foods, things like that, you might pee more often. But it shouldn't be like 20 and it shouldn't be two, right? Like you shouldn't be both sides are not helpful for your bladder. But if it feels, it's more like of a feeling. If it feels disruptive to your life, if you always have to be like, peeing before you leave, pee when you get to the store, know that there's a bathroom at your friend's house, like all these things. or if you're, it's called toilet mapping. Like if you know where every bathroom is in your town, like your public floor is probably tight.

Okay. I mean, people might be surprised that six to eight times is, is normal, right? They may like going all day long without peeing is not good for you. No, not good for your bladder. Often it can irritate your bladder lining and that sends a signal that you have to pee more often as well. So it can create the same issues, the same urgency or bladder. pain or pelvic tension because your body, you should be emptying that out more often. So you don't

have this really concentrated urine in your bladder all the time. Okay. Okay. So then what would good bladder hygiene be or pelvic hygiene be? So what we look at with pelvic physio is what's happening with these muscles. So this is your pelvis. Okay. Your bladder is here. If you're a woman, you have your uterus and your vaginal canal and then your rectum, all like this. This is your pelvic floor. So group of muscles that are doing a few things, holding up your organs, stopping your pee. It would be, it would look like, you know, you go to the bathroom, you feel like you fully emptied your bladder, and then you get an urge that you have to pee somewhere, but you can be like, oh, I'll just go later when I get home, you know?

If you hold it long enough, everyone's going to have urgency, but you really shouldn't have urgency. Waking up zero or one times a night, that would be perfect. Yeah, no pain, like no pelvic pain, no pain with intercourse. You know, those are great signs that your public floor is doing really well. Okay. Someone's like, can it just be weak and not tight or habituated? So I think we all were told if you're pissing your pants and you can't control

yourself, you've got to do more kegles. That isn't necessarily true. No. So most people assume that if they're having leakage or prolapse or pain even, that the muscles, like especially postpartum that kind of gets sold to us as like, oh, you have these like weak, loose muscles, right, that aren't doing anything. But the truth is, if the muscles in your public floor just got weak for no reason,

we would be really worried about that. It would be very similar to like if your arm got weak. We would be like, oh, you know, something neurological is going on. Oftentimes, because it's been through all of these things, painful period, back pain, delivery, all of these things, menopause, that these muscles are slowly getting tighter over time. And because they only attach from your pubic bone to your tail bone, it's hard to see this here. There's no way to stretch those muscles out like you would stretch other muscles.

So over time, all these little things are creating more tension in there. So you're functioning with a muscle that's really, really tight, can't contract as effectively as it needs to. And it's not always the case, but I would say it's more the case than it is weakness, which unfortunately leads to this diagnosis for everybody about doing kegles. one. The truth is that unless you've had an internal exam to find out what's happening in these muscles, which is what we do in pelvic physiotherapy, that you really shouldn't be just randomly doing kegles. Okay. All right. I mean, this is why someone needs to go see a specialist like you. Yeah. And like there's signs, right, that you have tension. If you're having urgency, you almost always have tension. If you're having like hip pain, back pain, if you have tailbone pain, if you are having like peeing all

the time through the day. If you're up through the night to pee, chances are you do have pelvic tension and it's not weakness. Sometimes like stress incontinence, right, which is more like a cough sneeze thing can be a timing issue with the muscles. They should be contracting right before you cough or right before you sneeze so we can retrain that. And sometimes prolapse where like part one of your organs is falling down into your pelvis. That could be more of a weakness issue. But often it's again, like your muscle's so tight and it's holding up these organs and then like slowly through the day, it's falling, not because it's weak, because it's exhausted. It would be like if you tried to hold, you know, 40 pounds in the morning, every day, it's falling.

And then by the like couple months, you can't even hold it up anymore. Not that it's just done way too much. So I want to talk about the hip pain. Because, you know, we had Amanda Thibon yesterday. And, you know, she sort of menopause is her space. And there are a lot of questions about not being able to exercise because of. hip pain, menopause-related. I see other questions on here. UTIs, for example, which can be menopause-related. What is happening that in menopause that's affecting our pelvic health?

So much. So they kind of group it as this genitone urinary symptoms of menopause. But as your estrogen decreases, it decreases the quality of your tissue. So the tissue around your vaginal wall gets thinner and the tissue around your urethra, where you pee, gets thinner so that when like the tissue is more irritable, it's like having drier skin. That's why women complain of dryness. But that's also why you're more likely to have a UTI. The tissue at your urethral opening is just more likely to have bacteria affected because it's like cracked dry skin. If you can kind of picture that, right? So that's the UTI piece. The hip piece is that probably most women who are going through menopause have some

sort of pelvic floor tension. They might have a hip issue, right? As your estrogen decreases, that can really affect joint pain in general. But I see people all the time who I'm treating for a regular hip pain and it's not improving. And then we do an internal exam and find out that, oh yeah, your pelvic floor is so tight. There's pelvic floor muscles that attach out into your hip that can be radiating pain to your hip. Your body doesn't have a really good connection with these muscles. So oftentimes you feel like, oh, it's like lower abdominal, lower back, hip, this like vague hip pain because your body can't tell you,

oh, your pelvic floor is tight. That doesn't really mean anything to you. So it can be pelvic tension. If you've done everything else and nothing is helping, it will be something to look into. Yeah. And so this is maybe I might not even be connecting the dots because maybe I'm going to a massage therapist. Maybe I, you know, have a trainer, you know, I know that you have a background, kinesiology. So I'm thinking, oh, that's what it is. Maybe I got to go to the Cairo. And that's, I really need to go see someone like you. Yeah, like you don't want to miss this really important piece. There's so many muscles that affect so many things. And we kind of pretend that they're not there because it's like a little uncomfortable. No one wants to have an internal exam. It just gives us so much information about

what's happening in your hips, in your back, in your pelvis, your tailbone, your bladder, blood and bowels, everything. Okay. So what, yeah, there's so many questions here because I want to, people want to know, how can you strengthen your pelvic health muscles? Like, or is it, is it, is it that they need strengthening if you're sneezing and coughing and laughing and peeing? How can we relieve pelvic health, pelvic floor tension?

Okay, I want to get into all of that. But what would a visit to someone like you look like? Because I think we're not thinking about this. We're going, we're going to other places to, to fix these issues and we're not thinking about like, you know, dry vagina. I've got my, you know, vaginal cream that I'm using, but there could be something more that I need. What is what does a visit you look like? Yeah, so you come in.

It's like a regular assessment. I understand that it can be intimidating. Most people are nervous. That's very normal. No one wants to have an internal exam. But the feedback I get most of the time is that, oh, that wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I don't know what people are expecting. But we take a look at your back and your pelvis and your hips, how things are moving.

And then we do an exam on your abdominal muscles. Those really affect how your pelvic floor is working and they're often compensating. So we look at the muscles around your pelvis. And then we often, if you feel comfortable, and there's things we can do without this, but often we get the most information by doing an internal vaginal exam. So vaginal for women, rectal for men. We sometimes do rectal treatment and assessment for men as well, or for women as well, if they're having bowel issues or tailbone stuff.

Yeah. It lasts about 20 minutes, which seems crazy, but there's no speculum. Like, it's not meant to be super painful. Even if you're having a lot of pain, we're really, like, cautious and careful. Unfortunately, a lot of people have had traumatic experiences in health care if you have pelvic issues, right? Either you're not believed or your pain is dismissed. So we're really careful about making sure that it's like a positive experience. So we're checking, is there tension in this muscle?

And you'll know. you'll be able to tell like, oh yeah, that feels tight, like if someone was pushing on my shoulder or no, that feels fine, right? So we're checking one side of your pelvis. We're checking the other side of your pelvis. We'll check for your strength to see what your strength is like. Because again, everyone is doing kegles. No one knows, you know, if they even have a strength issue. And then we check for prolapse if that's a concern, if we feel like there might be prolapse. We look for that. And then I give you stuff to do at home. It's not so scary. I was going to say a step to home, can I, can you release your muscles? on your own? Like what can we do on our own? Yeah. So I often show people how to do self-release. I would say it's like 50-50 people who are like, or they don't want to try, which is fine. Or they try and they're like, I don't know what's happening. But yes, you can try and see if you have tension yourself. You can release tension yourself. And you can also try with a partner if you

feel comfortable. The easiest way to do it yourself, it's a bit hard to explain on here. But the easiest way to release tension yourself, you can use, we have like a one. wand that you can purchase to release tension yourself. You could use anything, you know, like any sex toy that you have at home, you could use something like that as well. But I find the easiest way to do it yourself so that you actually know, like, you'll be able to feel the tension is with your own thumb. So in the shower, throw one leg up on the side of the tub.

This is easier vaginally. Like I don't have a lot of people doing rectal treatment themselves. But one foot up on the side of the tub, insert your thumb vaginally. Don't be scared. can't really hurt yourself. You're going to push over towards your hip. That would be like three o'clock. If your vaginal opening is like a clock, right?

It's like three o'clock over towards your hip, down on an angle. So you would be like down on an angle like this towards your hip or straight back. So this is your perennial body between your vaginal opening and your rectum. All your pelvic floor muscles come together there. So if you've heard about like perineal massage before delivery, that kind of thing, it's very similar to that. Are you having pain with that or does it feel fine, right? You can do a contraction, a pelvic floor contraction and see if you can feel that those muscles are moving well, you know, it's likely that the strength isn't necessarily the problem. Yeah, I mean,

you might be listening people like, oh, no fucking way. I'm doing that. But I mean, if this can help you, like, if this can help you get rid of your hip pain that you're having, it can help you. It can help you, these things that you're doing, be able to leave your house, have a normal life, have you not wearing diapers when you get older, like, yeah, it's uncomfortable, but at the same time, it can be game-changing. What have you seen in terms of improvement for people? Like, if someone is going to go see you, start doing these exercises, what kind of improvement can people see? I mean, really, like, I say to people all of them, this is a fixable problem. So, typically I'll see people, it really depends, like how long the issues have been there.

What are the combination of things that you're dealing with? Like, I see people who are dealing with like eight different things, right? Like valence, it's your and your incontinence, pain with intercourse. And then they have this and that. And so that, that all plays a role. But I would say, like, if I don't see significant results within like a few treatments, then we're looking further. Like, what's going on? Do you need to see a urologist? Do you need to see a gynecologist? Like, what's happening here? But really, it's a fixable problem. It shouldn't be like, oh, yeah, maybe now I only use two pads instead of three. Like, you really should have no leakage, no bowel issues, no pain with intercourse.

Like, that's the goal is like, no problem. So, you know, everyone walking around wearing pads or diapers, they're just, and I don't mean any disrespect if anyone's not doing it. They just don't know or they're just not doing the exercises or they're just thinking that's just how it is now and that doesn't have to be the reality. Yeah, I find that most people who come and see me are like, why didn't anybody tell me about this? I know that this was a thing. I would say most people aren't like, oh, I found out and then I didn't want to do it. They were like, I didn't know anything. Like, no one told me that there was something that I could do, which is why I'm like,

want to do things like this is because I know that oftentimes it's just that they don't know that there's anything out there that they can do, which is sad because it's super fixable and life changing when you don't have these problems that are holding you back from so many things. Okay, okay. So what's happening in your, in your pelvis? So let's say you have those tight muscles, they need to be released. Your core strength, your posture, obviously things when it comes to drinking water, you don't want to be chugging your water.

You want to sip, drink throughout. You want to be hydrated. What other things can we do? I would say the biggest things you can do is like do a bladder diary. We have one, I think, that we'll post that we've sent over. Just take a look at what you've done. what you're doing through the day. How many times you're peeing?

Count how long you're peeing when you pee. So 1,000, 2, 1,000, 3, 1,000, 1,000, it should be like at least six seconds, probably closer to like 8 or 10 if you're doing the program and you're really well hydrated. Okay. And so if you're, if you're, you know, going for three seconds or if your urine stream is starting and stopping, you know, those are all things to be aware of. Sometimes you just don't know. You're just peeing because you get an urge and you're just going all the time, but there's no real

reason why you're doing that. So it's taking stock of what's happening. You can work on urge delay. So oftentimes your body kind of goes into overdrive, your central nervous system, trying to protect you when you've had leakage or when you've had urgency before. So let's say one time you have a leak when you're out somewhere. Your central nervous system, your body's like alarm system is freaking out. It doesn't want you to have leakage in public. So it goes a little overboard, sending you this signal that you have to pee all the time when you don't in order to protect you. So like that's why it's so bad. Most people will say like, oh, when I drive into my driveway, when I turn my key, like it's called, you know, it's just urgency because your brain knows there's a bathroom in there.

And really, if you pee your pants at home, you know, you can change some. So the stakes are lower. Or if you like, you know you're about to leave your house and you know, you don't know if you're going to have access to a bathroom that you get this really strong urge to pee. It's your body trying to protect you, but it has gone way too far because this has been going on for a while. So there's a few things we do. You want to do bladder retraining. So we want to release the tension in the muscle so they can function the way that they need to. But you want to retrain your bladder to not send you the signal that you have to pee all the time. Yeah, because if you're always emptying your bladder before you need to empty your bladder,

that's sort of your new threshold for your bladder. You're like, this is where we have been trained that when it's this amount, that's when we go rather than letting your bladder fill. Like it is your body's wired to have to go to the bathroom more often, right? That happens. You've got to rewire it. just like what we're doing with the program. Exactly.

You're just used to it. Like if you're used to snacking at night and then you try and stop, it's hard. But if you keep doing it, it becomes much easier. Same thing with urge delay. So let's say you pull into your driveway, boom, you have to pee. You're like sprinting and like leave your groceries in the car. And then oftentimes you're either leaking on the way or it's just like a really stressful situation.

So what you want to do instead is stop, take a deep breath. You can do a pelvic floor contraction. So the way that we explain that to people is like thinking about. either a ping pong ball at your vaginal opening or a marble at your rectum and then think about pulling that up inside yourself you shouldn't see anything from the outside if anyone can see you moving you're not doing it right okay should just be pretty specific and then relax those muscles so that signals to your body like okay no like chill we don't actually need to pee all of a sudden that we're home right and then you want to distract your mind your mind is super powerful so if you're like rushing

running to get to the bathroom, what's happening is your muscles are like holding on as hard as they can, but we're assuming if you have urgency, these muscles are already tight. So they're tight. Now you're squeezing them as hard as you can and you're running. So your body can't sustain that and that's when you end up having leakage on the way or you start peeing like the second you're pulling your pants down kind of thing. So you want to distract your mind. Think about something else. Think about what you're going to make for your veg snack. Like think about what you're going to do when you get inside. You can count backwards from 100 by 2s. You can do calf raises outside your car. Like whatever you to do to distract yourself. The goal with that is not to hold your pee. It's to get the urge to

calm down so that then you can calmly walk to the bathroom pee like and then count how long it was. Oh, three seconds. Okay, no, I know. Now I know, you know, that wasn't actually the water wasn't full. I just got this crazy urge. So keep practicing that in all of these situations. If you know it's always bad when you drive home, as you start to drive towards your house, start doing a contraction and a relax, some deep breathing, trying to get that to calm down. You know, this is so great. You've given us so many, so many tips here. Obviously, these conversations are our overview. We've have other conversations with Aaron available on our podcast. By here people, I'm watching people talk about the cost of this because it's not covered, right? By Ohip? It's not covered by Ohip. It is covered if you have private physiotherapy benefits. It's covered under physiotherapy. But yeah, unfortunately, it's not covered by Ohip even though it should be. Okay. But here's what I'm saying, like invest in, in a session and go try to find out what's going on. And Aaron has named a lot of things that you can do on your own. I would imagine just like anything else is about being really consistent with doing those things,

right? Like also, you know, managing your stress. Yeah. You know, having good course strength, being healthy in general, making sure you're hydrated. All of that really adds up. Like if you, if you are having hip pain, I would imagine there are exercises and things. that you can do along with that as well. I'm thinking about menopause and like is it a is would HRT or MRT help with this? Yeah. So oftentimes oral HRT doesn't specifically help with urinary incontinence, but vaginal estrogen because that that affects the tissue right there, right? Like your vaginal tissue, your urethral tissue is often super effective in helping with that tissue quality. So you, people talking about recurrent UTIs, pain with intercourse.

But if you're doing all of these things and you're still having pain, like, don't listen. Often I hear women say like, oh, my doctor just said it's because I'm in menopause and I have dryness. Like dryness is not pain, right? So if you are doing all the things, using lubricant, using your vaginal estrogen and you're still having pelvic pain with intercourse, that's pelvic tension. Yeah, and that's a huge misconception. Like everyone pretty much can use vaginal cream. Like it doesn't affect you the way, you know, taking hormone therapy does or menopause therapy does.

There's just no reason why you should, you should be having a vagina. Like you just, honestly, they need to have it over the counter. If your doctor tells you that you don't need it or you can't have it, go to someone else, go to walk and get it. What about sex? Do you think that, you know, it just has me thinking like, oh, there's a lot of people not having a lot of sex. Yeah.

And you're thinking about orgasms, muscles contracting, natural kind of like, you know, wrapping around the thing and the, you know, stuff that happens. Yeah. You think that's one of the reasons why we, or one way that you could be more protective about pelvic health? Yeah. Like intercourse, orgasm, all of those things are super helpful to like work these muscles, right? Bring more blood flow to the area. Help with vaginal hydration. Like all of those things are really, that's super helpful, right?

And oftentimes women end up, like if you do have a painful experience, and they feel guilty. They're like, oh, I feel really bad. I really, you know, I want to be close to my partner, but I have pain. And like I feel maybe I'm making this up or maybe I'm tightening up because I don't want to do it. Yeah. None of that is true. If you're having pain, there's like physical tension there. There's no amount of like contraction you can do to cause pain with intercourse.

But yeah, like it's a great thing to be doing. and it can really help with your public floor health for sure. But it's very normal to not want to do it if you've had pain in the past. It would be like if you got in a car accident, every time you got in your car, you don't want to go in the car. So, yeah. It's multifaceted. It's so layered.

Obviously, menopause affects desire and sex drive, all of those things. But yeah, it's a huge part of it. Like if your public floor isn't doing what it should be doing, it can really affect all of those things. someone's asking about would the Morena IUD, which releases estrogen help? I guess, you know, because estrogen is anti-inflammatory. Would that help? It probably wouldn't directly help.

It would be same as oral, like either contraception or H.R.T. It affects your whole body in a lot of ways, right? Like that's what really will help with, like hot flashes and joint pain and all of those things, but often not with urinary incontinence because it's just the tissue that's the problem. So it often needs the direct vaginal estrogen cream to really make a big difference. And that's what the research shows anyways right now. Okay. What does it take away here, Erin?

What do you want people to know about what's possible when they get the right support? I just want people to know that you don't have to suffer in silence. There's someone who will believe you if you have, you know, urine leakage, stool leakage, prolapse, heaviness, pelvic pain, you know, anything that's happening down there, I don't want people to feel embarrassed to bring it to their doctor, find someone else if they're not being believed. There's help for you, right? Like, this is not something that you just have to live with and deal with. It really is a fixable problem.

Whenever we have you on, people are always like, I want to see you. Right. Because they feel like they trust you. I would too. I drive all the way. You're up in Aurelia here in Ontario. People can find you. You're at Lake.

Lake Country Physio. Lake Country Physio. if you want to go to the website. But how would people, like, what's your suggestion? This is obviously, it can be uncomfortable for people. I can see that being a barrier. How would they know they found the right person and what do you look for? What are the questions to ask?

So, you know, it's kind of like finding a therapist. You want to feel comfortable with somebody. You want to, you know, it's very personal. So, I mean, I'm happy to see people. I do not want you to drive from like Waterloo to see me. It's crazy because, oh, I'm driving. I'm driving. I'm driving four hours. I'm doing it. But yes, okay. I hear you.

Yeah. But yeah, there's so many great qualified therapists. There's a good site. It's called Public Health Solutions. It has so many. Yeah, the website is there. So it has so much good information. And you can find a therapist in your area there who has been trained in the same way. And, you know, there's good and bad with everything. So if you go and you have a bad experience, you know, try someone else. I know it feels like a really invasive thing and, you know, you don't want to have to do it more than once. Honestly, it's not that bad.

We really need to normalize. Like, this is just a part of your body. It's a muscle that has been through probably more than the rest of your body. And we're ignoring it. We're pretending like nothing happened when everything happened. Yeah. You know, we're worried about we're working on our biceps and trying to eat the protein and we're trying to do all get our steps in and doing all this stuff. And it's just like another part of your body that, you know, the way we live our lives with high.

stress and bad posture and, you know, lack of support or conversation in this area. I need to re-listen to this conversation. Yeah, Andrea. And I'll summarize the notes for people, too, so they can get the kind of summary of this. If you want, Aaron's also on Instagram and also gives all sorts of fun tips as well. And she's a whiz in the kitchen. You've got to check out some of her recipes. She's freely giving information.

I love that about you. Squats and coffee. So squats. dot end coffee if you want to follow her over there. Again, one more time, lakecountryphysio.com is the website, lakecountryphysio.com. And that resource, again, for people, is pelvic health solutions.com. Always a pleasure. I learn something new every single time with you. Thank you so much for coming and spending your morning with us. Thanks, everyone who's joining us live. Thanks for all your comments and your questions. And if you're

listening afterwards, we appreciate you. Have a great rest of your day, everyone. Thanks, Bye.