Woman's Hour - Exercise at home, Safe access to abortion during Covid-19, Lauren Gunderson, Jessica Moor

Episode Date: March 27, 2020

Keeping up fitness when you're isolated at home. Jenni talks to fitness instructor Rosemary Mallace of Over Fifty Fitness and Professor Janet Lord, an expert in muscle health and immunity from the University of Birmingham, about why keeping moving is particularly important as you get older and what you can do to exercise at home.Earlier this week the Government published advice that women could be prescribed both abortion pills for a medical abortion, which they would be able to take at home, without attending a hospital or clinic. It has since said that this was published in error. With women trying to observe instructions to stay at home – some self-isolating – trying to reduce the spread of Coronavirus the British Pregnancy Advisory Service says that 500 women a day must make unnecessary journeys, with services and clinic closures forcing them to travel greater distances. So, how can those women who need an abortion access one safely and legally? Jenni speaks to Professor Lesley Regan, Past President RCOG and Co-Chair National Women’s Health Task Force and to Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow.Hampstead Theatre in London is currently streaming on Instagram, ‘I and You’ a play they produced in 2018 starring Maisie Williams in her first stage role. It looks at the struggle a teenager finding herself restricted to her home. The playwright, Lauren Gunderson, currently the most produced living playwright in the US, tells us about her play and what it says about the struggles of youth confined across the globe.Keeper by Jessica Moor is a novel set in a women’s refuge. Katie, an employee there, has died. As the women in the refuge insist Katie didn’t take her own life the police are forced to investigate. Jenni talks to debut novelist Jessica Moor and to Natasha Saunders who has experience of domestic abuse and of life in a refuge. What can fiction do to shed light on domestic abuse?Presented by Jenni Murray Produced by Jane ThurlowInterviewed guest: Stella Creasy Interviewed guest: Lesley Regan Interviewed guest: Lauren Gunderson Interviewed guest: Jessica Moor Interviewed guest: Natasha Saunders Interviewed guest: Rosemary Mallace Interviewed guest: Janet Lord

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Friday the 27th of March. Good morning. As we learn, rates of domestic violence are set to rise as so many of us are forced to stay at home. A book called Keeper. Why was Jessica Moore inspired to write a novel, her first, about coercive control and women who've sought refuge? As theatres find ways of bringing their great productions to you at home, Laura Gunderson, the most produced living playwright in the United States, joins us from San Francisco to discuss her play, I and You, which the Hampstead Theatre is showing on

Instagram. And doing your exercises in the house during lockdown. Why does it matter more when you're older and how to do it safely? And yes, I will be expected to prove I can get up and down from a chair without using my hands. Wait and see. Now, there's long been debate about the prescription of pills which are used for medical abortion. It's been a requirement that a woman should be given the first of two tablets under supervision in a clinic. The second could be taken at home.

Earlier this week, the government published advice that women could be prescribed both pills to take at home without having to travel to the clinic or hospital. It seemed to make sense at a time when everyone is trying to observe the instruction to stay at home. Well, soon after that advice was published, it was rescinded. The government said it had been published in error. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service says 500 women a day must make the journey and as services and clinics close, they may have to travel even greater distances than usual. How then can women who need an abortion get one safely and legally?

Stella Creasy is Labour MP for Walthamstow, Professor Lesley Regan is a past president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and one of the chairs of the National Women's Health Task Force. Lesley, why as far as you can tell was the government's advice reversed? We've been unable to find out Jenny on monday at about midday all the abortion care providers and health care professionals involved in women's care received this notice that the secretary of state had very sensibly i think approved two temporary measures in england to limit the transmission of covid19 and ensure continued access to these essential early medical abortion services. And the first was for women and girls to be able to take both pills for early medical

abortions in their own homes, therefore not requiring to attend a hospital or clinic. You've just mentioned the closures of clinics, Jenny, and that means that some women will be forced to travel very long distances, potentially infecting many people. And the other temporary measure that the Secretary of State had agreed to was that medical practitioners such as myself, who perhaps were self-isolating or unwell, would be able to prescribe the pills to that woman after a teleconference or a Skype call from their own home so that if I was self-isolating, I didn't have to go into a clinic or a hospital facility. Stella, how satisfied are you with the government's reasons for then rescinding the advice that had been published on Monday?

Well, I'm sorry, we've not obtained the reasons and that's what I think the concern is. Leslie, you haven't had any reasons? No, we've asked for reasons, and indeed questions were asked of Matt Hancock in the House on Tuesday. The emergency telephone calls came from the Department of Health at about half past eight on Monday night, followed swiftly by an email. And then immediately we all checked online and the direction had disappeared from the DHSC website. Stella, what do you make of that?

Well, this is what's so puzzling, Jenny, because you ask whether we're satisfied with the government's rationale for this U-turn. They haven't given us one. And in fact, the Secretary of State in Parliament actually kept saying there were no plans to change the regulations well it's simply not true when as you're hearing people involved in in these services were sent very detailed proposals for how to deal with this temporary situation i think everybody understands that abortion is seen as a controversial issue and we're also living in exceptional times where we want every single medic in this country to be able to be focused on supporting people who

might have COVID-19 and to reduce as much bureaucracy within the NHS to make it possible especially if medics are ill and so services are going to be reduced to provide a decent healthcare service so it made sense to all of us to have a temporary measure in place to deal with the way in which abortion pills are prescribed. And it is absolutely mystifying that the Secretary of State is now trying to pretend that they never seemed to bring these proposals forward in the first place

and will not talk about it or provide any explanation for the U-turn. Lesley, remote provision has, as I understand it, been ruled safe by the World Health Organization. And we know they do it in France and I think in one of the Scandinavian countries. But is it really a good way of doing it for the woman without feeling she has medical supervision? I think it's been proven, Jenny, that it would be very safe and very successful. And indeed, telemedicine for abortion was recommended by our own NICE last September 2019,

when they published the co-badge guidelines between NICE and the RCOG. We know that France has adopted the service and they've had no problems and it's been very successful and very safe. Stella, the matter was discussed in the Lords. Baroness Bennett and Baroness Butler argued for a greater role for midwives and telemedicine. But Lord Bethel said he was concerned that some women may be coerced into abortion by abusive partners. How sympathetic are you to his concern? This is something that's brought up frequently but then the answer isn't to restrict access to abortion the answer is to have proper services for people who are victims of domestic violence and ireland has just introduced this exact same exemption to be able to help women and we think there will be about 44 000 women in this

position in the next three months who will require an early medical abortion. What we also know is when you restrict access to abortion, you don't prevent abortion. You simply encourage women to make risky choices. So we may well see women trying to order these pills online or do even worse things because they're not able to exercise their right to not be forced to continue an unwanted pregnancy. I find it mystifying that the government seems to be looking at all sorts of other issues. They had clearly come up with a perfectly sensible plan, as Leslie said, tried and tested elsewhere to deal with this temporary problem on Monday that they talked to the medical bodies about. And yet suddenly something happened Monday afternoon to make them do a reverse ferret. There are concerns that this advice was a kind of Trojan horse for going beyond the 1967 Act and giving women autonomy.

Isn't there a danger there? There's a danger in giving women autonomy. Well, I don't live in Gilead, even though we might be living in exceptional times, Jenny, and I hope you don't either. There is absolutely a debate to be had in this country about the nature of our abortion framework. Many of us have been working on that.

Indeed, this week in Northern Ireland, finally the regulations came through where Northern Ireland now trusts women to make choices in partnership with their doctors rather than requiring doctors to make those choices for them. I don't actually think now is the time to do that. I do think now is the time to protect the health of 44,000 women in this country and their ability to access an abortion if they wish to have one.

And that's what we're talking about now, a temporary measure. We're not talking about having the bigger, wider debate that we do need to have in this country about why we still treat women as second-class citizens when it comes to their own health care leslie i i know the government has said that they will continue to monitor this situation how easy is that going to be given the pressures on the whole system i think it's going to be extremely difficult in fact it's just not feasible what we have to do is to get this recommendation reinstated so that 500 women every day are not forced to break lockdown

to attend a clinic. And if we're not even worried about, as Stella said, the 44,000 women that that will involve over the next 13 weeks, which is the time interval which this pandemic is predicted

to reach its peak, then please, please think about all the healthcare professionals that these women are going to come into contact with. And my team at St Mary's are really working all hours of the day and night trying to deal with emergency care. It seems absolutely mad that we should now have to bring women in and expose them to healthcare professionals to get a tablet

that they can easily be sent in the post. How are your staff coping, Lesley? They're a fantastic team and I'm really, really proud of them. But they are very frightened, understandably, because they are seeing some of their own colleagues and some of our midwifery colleagues who are unwell and have been exposed to COVID positive patients. Of course, they're helping them and doing everything they possibly can. But I think it's completely unacceptable to expose the NHS staff to unnecessary risks and unnecessary work burdens at this particular time. This is a national

emergency. Everyone's stepping up to the plate. And we really need the government to do their bit just to sign this letter. There's no work involved involved the work has already been done the letters were prepared the letters were circulated all they need to do is to say they're reinstating this temporary measure professor leslie regan and stella creasy thank you both very much indeed for joining us this morning we did of course ask the government to join us and give their explanation no one was available and we did ask for a statement, but no statement was forthcoming. Now those of us who love going to the theatre and do it pretty regularly

have been suffering severe withdrawal symptoms already only a couple of weeks since the theatres began to shut down, but not all hope is lost. The National Theatre has announced it will be showing some of its most admired productions that were filmed for cinema on YouTube. It begins next Thursday, and London's Hampstead Theatre has already put a play called I and You on its Instagram page. It was the first stage role for Maisie Williams,

who became a star as a result of Game of Thrones. It was chosen as being suitable for these strange times because it's the story of a teenager who's confined to her home because of a severe liver disease. The writer is Lauren Gunderson who's the

most produced living playwright in the United States and she's only 38. She joins us from San Francisco on World Theatre Day. Lauren, it was your idea, I know, for the play to be shown now, streamed on Instagram. Why did you want it to happen now? Well, it's such a pleasure to be here. I thought it would be perfect, partly because we already had this wonderful experience when the play premiered in 2018. And because of Maisie's incredible Instagram following, Instagram worked with the theater

to do the very first live streamed play on Instagram. And then, of course, the content hit me all over again with this shelter in place. I'm in San Francisco, which is the first American city to be on full shelter in place mode. And it felt like a kind of great coincidence, although a trying one. And certainly I believe that theater is one of those things that one has been around long enough, it's not going anywhere, but that it needs us now. And it needs us to remember what that feeling is to have a story well told in front of us, whether that be when we can be together again in person or on our various screens. Now, I know it was written when you were 30, so that's what, about eight years ago. But how easy was it even then to get into the head of a 17-year-old girl dealing with confinement at home?

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of us aren't terribly far away from parts of our 17-year-old selves. So that was in some ways a trip down memory lane, so to speak, for me. But also, you know, stories about people are stories about people. And what was true about this story is even though it's about a 17-year-old, it's about someone who's been through a lot in life and somebody who is pushing the world away because the world has been cruel to her. And here comes this young man, Anthony, who is presenting a new way of living, a new way of seeing the world again. And it's a kind of universal human story,

even though people certainly expected it to be a story for kids or a story for teens. And that's why I was so proud of it, because it was able to use that youthful experience to talk to people across generations. What would you say is actually the biggest message from the play, which I watched on Instagram yesterday? Social media bad? Human contact good? Something like that, yes. But I think the big reveal at the end is about how connected and similar we all are. you don't give it don't give it away for people i won't indeed but but part of there is there is a a twist um and part of what it goes to is the heart of our our humanity and and the

things that bring us together and how again similar um we all are despite the differences we might show up assuming. I assume you're a big fan of Walt Whitman as well, because he features quite a lot in the play, doesn't he? He does, and I thought he was kind of beloved across the world, but when we started the Hampstead Theatre, our amazing director, Ed Hall, kind of said, you know, British folks don't study Walt Whitman the way that Americans do.

And I was like, oh, really? He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we have our own poets. I was like, no, good point. Good point. He is a good poet, though, even though he's not British. He is indeed. And what I love about him so much and features in the play is his kind of joie de vivre and his rebellious poetic heart, which this young woman really needs at this point in her life. A little bit of poetry, a little bit of optimism, and a little bit of rebellion. Now, Caroline, she's not an easy character. She's quite shouty and cross and clearly suffering terribly because she has to be confined because she's so ill. And the reviews were excellent when it was first produced at Hampstead.

But I know some people found her unlikable. Why did that make you furious? Oh, gosh. The most pure feminist in me is the one that hates the word unlikable because it is most often used for female characters. And when early productions of this play, that was an easy word that was thrown around about our dear Caroline. And Maisie did such an incredible job of harnessing that character's intelligence, but her bristle. And I think that is so potent in all great protagonists. Is Hamlet so very likable when we meet him?

Is King Lear? No, of course not. And that's what makes them interesting and mysterious and have depth and texture. But of course, when it's a young woman who likes cats and pop music, it's easy to write her off. So I was quite proud that this play was able to show what's really at the heart of this great protagonist, even though, yes, she is a teenage girl. You are, as I said in the introduction, the most produced playwright in the United, living playwright in the United States, apart from Shakespeare, who of course is no longer living.

What brought you to writing plays? I tapped into that love as a very young kid. I mean, I was in kindergarten, our very early primary school when I realized how much I loved, of course, at first, doing plays, being on stage, and then realizing that the true godlike power was in the writing of it. That's where you get to say what stories matter, who wins and why, and to find that kind of deep connection from story and storyteller to audience. So I've loved it for a long time, and I continue to love it now. And certainly in the last couple of weeks, I've been reminded how much it means to me. It's my church. It's where I go to find congregation and moral uplift and empathy and stories that help me find resilience and meaning.

So I am quite at a loss without the ability to go and gather, but I am confident that through this we'll be on the other side of it and get together in the theatre again. Lauren Gunderson, thank you so much for joining us this morning. And, of course course you can see Lauren's play, I and You for free until Sunday the 29th of March

at 10 o'clock at night if you go to the Hampstead Theatre's Instagram page and it is well worth seeing Now still to come in today's programme, Exercise at Home Why it Matters and How to do it without harm. And yes, I will join in with Rosemary's over 50 fitness and of course the serial, the final episode of Absent.

Now we know that one of the great concerns about this extended period of confinement to the home is that it may increase the occurrence of domestic violence just at a time when escaping to a refuge, if indeed there is one, would be more difficult than ever. In a new novel, Keeper, Jessica Moore writes about coercive control, escape, life in a refuge, and the risk that can carry on when a man continues to stalk his victim. Katie is employed at the refuge and here she explains the atmosphere. Working at the refuge sometimes feels like catching a whiff of some half-forgotten smell. All those women crammed together.

It's like being back at her all-girls school. Not bitchy, which was always the complaint that came pre-leveled against large groups of females. It's something heavier than that. The weight of requirement to always be the best, the kindest, sweetest and least troublesome person in the room. Surrounded by women who have lived under siege in their own skin, the effect is amplified, yet remains unmistakably the same. In her bones, Katie longs for the women to explode, to hurt the world instead of relentlessly and insistently continuing to hurt themselves.

They move like mice around each other, continually apologising for a stream of imaginary offences. Oh, my microphone's been open so I can join you again. It's a very busy morning, as I'm sure you can imagine, Jessica and Natasha. Of course. I'll just continue that it's Katie in the story who dies. The police believe she's taken her own life. The women in the refuge disagree.

So what light can such a story shed on domestic abuse? Now, I'm joined by Natasha Saunders, who's had experience of such abuse and of Life in a Refuge and by the writer who read so beautifully Jessica Moore. Jessica thank you so much for that. How did you become interested in Life in a Refuge? Well I had a job in a domestic violence charity. To be very clear I wasn't working on the front line. I was basically working in a sort of fundraising capacity. But through that, I went into a lot of refuges

and I was quite fascinated by the atmosphere of this kind of network of secret spaces and also the idea that these were kind of places that only exist because someone something's not working dangerous men are loose and if there isn't the protection of a place like a refuge then they can cause incredible harm and i can see why you would be very keen to bring the questions forward but why did you decide to make such a disturbing subject, a thriller, a detective story?

Well, it wasn't so much a case of making it a thriller. It was more a case of deciding to use the expectations that a genre generates for my own end. There are certain tropes that are always going to be or often present in a crime or thriller book and one of those is the trope of the dead girl and she's sort of faceless and nameless and she's there as a sort of nexus of action but her own interiority doesn't matter very much often and I felt that if I was going to engage with those expectations then there was an opportunity to flip those on their head and what I do in the book is I take you know the early image of

a girl on a slab in a mortuary and I trace what happened to her. Natasha as someone who has experienced violence and life in The Refuge what What did you make of being asked by us to read a thriller on the subject? Well, in all honesty, I rolled my eyes a little and I thought, here we go, here's another person attempting to understand something they haven't experienced. However, I was, you know, gladly proved wrong. And the book resounded with me in so many

different ways, not just with my own experiences, but with experiences of the women I met along my journey, women I continue to meet, who suffer so many similarities and more with this fantastic story. So how much did you recognize the women in the book what what stories rang true with you i mean i think as a victim who suffered rape at the hands of my ex-husband for eight years it was very um you know the subtle rape the the katie feeling you know she was plagued by that self-doubt. You know, I didn't fight him off. I didn't scream. I didn't shout. He has needs.

And I think when Jamie first raped Katie, Jessica has captured it in such a fantastic way. It's not seedy. It's not, you know, glamorized. It's very, it's just really hard-hitting. And the moment I read it, I i sort of it didn't sort of trigger anything but it made me go wow someone else understands jessica jessica how far did you model them on women you'd actually met or real stories that you'd heard it was less a case of modeling them on women i'd met in my job um and more kind of looking at people I knew and friends I knew and people I love and the ways in which they kind of squash themselves down a bit for the sake of relationships.

And I knew that, you know, we all know that two women a week are killed by a partner or former partner. So it's not it's not an aberration. It's in some ways normal. So I wanted to look at the characteristics of normal women, women I knew, and understand how that can operate on a spectrum from, you know, feeling diminished, maybe doing things that you're not comfortable with to then ultimately um a seriously coercively controlling relationship and ultimately domestic homicide now they're part of the same thing katie is absolutely at the heart of of the book and what did you base her i based her on the very bright very uh well-educated young women i know with a lot going for them who i had seen um get worn down by relationships that weren't good for them and i because my understanding is that this can happen to anyone and if it can happen to anyone it can happen to

people i know and it or it could happen to me there's nothing that exempts anyone from um this kind of abuse and it's very easy to think that there's a certain type of person who is quote unquote a victim but people don't have victim rubber stamped on their forehead and by the way people don't have perpetrator rubber stamped on their forehead either so it's about understanding that these are real people Natasha can I hear you in the background echoing what Jessica is saying yes it's a lot of people go to me oh you don't look like a rape victim I mean I I just don't know you know and I mean I think one of the really strong characters in the book is Val. I think you've got this woman who outside is viewed as a bit of a busybody to the police,

the pain in the community's backside, always nagging, always wanting more funding. And then actually, when you look on the flip side, she's trying to keep these women safe. Some of these women don't even know how to keep themselves safe because of the self-doubt and the lack of funding. Val, of course, runs the refuge. She's in charge of the refuge. Yes. And you sort of think to yourself, it's very simple for people to grasp onto the word feminist and turn it into something negative. But, you know, Val is fighting for women's lives she really is there's no you know she's not a busybody she just she's trying to help everybody she can. Jessica one of the women Lynn returns to her violent partner why did you include that in the story? Because it's truth um it takes a lot of women often between five and seven times um

seven attempts to leave before they leave permanently and sometimes women do go from refuges and back into um the relationship um and often i think there's an idea that if somebody goes back then that means that what they you means that the abuse wasn't really that bad or that they didn't really want to leave or that they're a masochist or something. And I wanted to really go deep into the psychology of why somebody might do that in the book. And there are so many reasons.

Some of them are emotional, some of them are practical, but they are worthy of exploration. People shouldn't write a woman off just because she might go back natasha i know you did it at one point why at the time it was well i have two children with him and he promised to get help and he he loved me and he couldn't live without me and he realized all of his faults and he would allow me to go out and he would allow me my own money and and things like that and from from quite literally the moment I stepped foot in the door his demeanor changed and it was now you're back now you're mine this will never happen

again I'm going to tighten it even more and I felt that shame i i felt that i stupidly went back why did i believe him but it was i'm going to lose my home all of my possessions my pet my children will have no father will they blame me for that you know how does society view a single mother my perpetrator quite regularly used to say i have papers for for you, like a dog, you know, and it would be a case of, well, nobody wants a single mother, they're worthless. And I think it really did, it was there and it was what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And just for anybody listening, I'm now married to my best friend. And not that you need a man to validate you. It's a case of when you're in the right place and in the right frame of mind

and you've managed to heal yourself from what you've been through, you can continue to have healthy relationships with everybody around you, with your friends, your family, a partner. I think Katie does an excellent job of showing that it affects everybody. There's no particular type of abuse somebody doesn't have to beat you for it to be abused um and the book is just jessica's just made a fantastic piece for people to read they really need to pick it up and dissect it for themselves because i think you walk away a little bit more educated natasha saunders and

jessica moore i don't think you could have higher praise than that thank you both very much indeed you walk away a little bit more educated. Natasha Saunders and Jessica Moore, I don't think you could have higher praise than that. Thank you both very much indeed for being with us this morning. And of course, there are links on the Women's Hour website for any organisations that can offer help and support. And we would like to hear from you as well. If you have stories like Natasha's,

do let us know. You can tweet us or you can email us now we have been told that we are allowed to go out for exercise but where is there to go if you're not a dog walker a runner or a cyclist all gyms even those in the parks are shut so it's home and if you're an internet fan, there's plenty of online programmes to follow. But if you don't want to do PE with Joe Wicks, what can you do if you're in the older generation for which keeping mobile is so important? By the way, do keep a chair handy for a little bit of practice now with Rosemary Malice, who runs Over 50 Fitness in Manchester

and who has put me through torture before. And we're also joined by Professor Janet Lord, Director of the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham. Janet, why is sitting for long periods so bad for us as we age? Well, the start point is that your immune system has declined with age and your muscles also tend to lose their mass and their strength with age. And what may surprise your listeners is actually that muscle helps to regulate your immune system. And if it's moving, it's great.

What it does, it produces hormones called myokines, which help your immune system to function better. If your muscle isn't moving, on the contrary, then there's no help there for your immune system. And you increase the risk that you'll actually start to lay fat down in your muscle. And that's bad because it stops the muscle from working properly. But also fat is pro-inflammatory. And we know that inflammation is one of the things that is really bad for your health. So muscle really is an all-round good regulator of your immune health. And now keeping your immune system up is probably more

important than it's ever been? Absolutely. You'll have heard all the stories that it's actually the older adults and those that have got pre-existing conditions that are most susceptible to coronavirus. And also if they do get the illness, then they tend to be sicker. And again, we know this is because your immune system doesn't work as well as you get older. And unfortunately, when you do get an infection, it just doesn't behave correctly. And it can cause some nonspecific damage as it's trying to do its job. And what our research has shown is that if you go out and exercise and bizarrely I never knew where this figure of 10,000 steps came from but when we analysed over 200 older adults in Birmingham we found the ones that were doing the 10,000 steps their immune system behaved correctly.

Ah right okay so my dogs will get a longer walk than ever I think um as the weekend comes rosemary hello rosemary we have met before now you run regular classes for over 50s which are now streamed online since the lockdown and you describe them as functional fitness what do you mean by functional fitness well functional fitness is um hello by the way jenny I hope you might have forgotten our previous encounter. No, unfortunately, Rosemary, I haven't forgotten our previous encounter in Manchester. I hope your legs weren't too sore afterwards. Right. Functional fitness is fitness that you need to function, basically. it's fitness that helps you with everyday life so you don't learn to do a squat just for the sake of learning to do a squat you learn to do it because it helps you get up and downstairs it helps you walk it helps you play with your

grandchildren helps you get in and out the bath so that's what functional fitness is now only five percent of men as i understand itemary, do the recommended 150 minutes of exercise each week. And for women, it's 2%. What do you think stops so many women doing specific exercises? Actually, I didn't know that statistic, and that is absolutely shocking, isn't it? Maybe it's because I meet people that come to exercise classes but it's my experience that most older people know that they should exercise but i think sometimes they just don't know where to start and don't know how they don't want to go to the gym um that for various reasons well it's all those young

people looking so fit and lovely, isn't it? Well, it is. Frighten us. I once got asked by somebody, do we have to wear Lycra? I thought, oh, no, no. I just don't know. I mean, there are two components to this fitness thing. It's 150 minutes of exercise a week that makes you slightly breathless.

But then to add on to what Janet said, you should be doing at least two strengthening exercises a week. Not strengthening exercises, two strengthening sessions a week. And that's to keep your muscle mass up. And that is vitally important. And I didn't know that about the immune system, which is just fantastic to know. Janet, what does the science tell us about, I mean, if so few women are actually doing regular prescribed sort of exercise, don't we get an awful lot of exercise? Hoovering, cleaning the house, going for walks with the dogs, walking to

the shops. I mean, I know now is a difficult time, but under general circumstances, is there enough fitness exercise in everyday getting about? Yes, that's a really good question. So there's been lots of studies that have looked at that. And to be honest, even taking that into account, those figures that you mentioned, the 5% and the 2%, they were actually people wore fitbit like monitors so they did monitor them correctly and even taking into account those daily activities people are really not doing the amount of activity they should do but as your starting question was correct what we now know is the worst thing you can do is to sit down all day and watch daytime tv So they might have done one of Rosemary's classes or they might have gone for a walk. But if you then sit down, you pretty well undo all of the good you've done. So it's important to keep exercising during the day. And I know things that Rosemary is going to

take us through in a minute. And also there's other online tips like move it or lose it do the cuppa routine sort of a series of four exercises to do while you're making a cup of tea so I think the other message to get across to the listeners is to make sure that you break your sitting time up try to do something regularly okay we have arrived at the moment uh Rosemary um what do you want me to do first and everybody who is listening who has got a chair ready go right well you need a ideally a dining room chair or a kitchen chair i mentioned squats before but a lot of people i can't do squatting technique on the radio because you can't see me no and i'm not doing squatting even for you right so you sit on the chair uh with your knees at 90 degrees and then if you can just stand up

without using your hands you may over the years have got into the habit of putting your hands on your knees when you stand up or holding on to the arms of the chair if you can just stand up without holding on that's great now some people can't do that if you want to you the thing about exercise is it needs to be consistent and if you find you can't do it you give up so find something you can do well done jenny and everybody in the control room has done it right right i want to sign affidavit i want to sign affidavit the um the next exercise is very very simple it's just going on tiptoe oh i've done this one before with you and it is painful well if it's if an exercise is painful don't do it that is my that's my top tip what they used to say no pain no game without without pain. Is that not true anymore?

Yeah, well, I'm going to have a word with that young lady. The walking on tiptoes is great exercise. It's actually easier to balance if you're walking than it is to just stand on tiptoe. But I mean, it gives you better balance, better coordination, better stability. And you can do it at the bus stop. If you're waiting for a bus, just up and down on your tiptoes. I've actually just done it without holding on to anything i can't walk around the studio because i've got headphones on they would come off if i walk around uh but are people allowed

to hold on to a chair if necessary whilst they're tiptoe standing i was going to say hold on to a chair or if you're walking walk by a wall and hold on to that or put it on your favorite track and dance because dancing you you do go on tiptoe without even realizing it and just make it fun okay give us one more right the next one is for your shoulders and your arms you stand standing nice and tall with your hands on your thighs and all you're going to do is raise one arm up in front of you and keep going all the way up until it's pointing up to the ceiling

in line with your ears. If you can't do that, if you can only get it sort of halfway up, that's absolutely fine. And then as you bring it down, bring the other one up. So you're putting your arms up and down alternately, okay? Try not to lean back, try to just keep, it's only your arms that move your body doesn't move and this is great for shoulder mobility shoulder strength helps you back it helps your balance you can do that one sitting down as well but if you can

stand up do it to do an exercise it's much better to stand up because that helps your balance I've done it, standing up. Now I have to ask, Janet, were you doing them with us? Yes, absolutely. And in fact, I'm standing up the whole time because, you know, I'm really against sitting. So I actually have a standing desk all day. So I stand all day. Oh, that's a very good idea, standing up all day.

I'm not sure I'm going to adopt that. I will do more of the exercises that Rosemary has recommended. Can I just say, Jenny, you can build them into your everyday life. I am quite a fan of doing formal exercise as well to get to do two or three times a week. But you can build this into your everyday life. Just make a habit of not using your hands to get out of a chair. Make a habit of walking on tiptoe. And build it into things that you do.

And I was exercising with Rosemary Malice and Professor Janet Lord. Now, lots of you have got in touch through email and social media, particularly about safe access to abortion during the virus crisis. Claudia Merg emailed to share her personal experience of such an abortion. Back in 1997, when the abortion pill was introduced, I was offered this option. Two weeks after taking the first one, I went to the hospital to have the second pill with the natural abortion expected within hours. I was in an emotional mess as I really wanted the baby for my new partner, but we couldn't afford it. And I wasn't sure he'd be allowed to stay in the country or not. I don't think I took in all I was told what to expect.

For months I cried every time I saw a baby. Eventually I recovered, but I've never forgotten. What worries me about the abortion at home approach is the long-term effect, the fallout. At Furnace Girl on Twitter said simply, listening to Woman's Hour, this is shocking about restricted access to abortion. On Keeper, the novel about domestic violence and the refuge, Debbie Baysden tweeted to say that fiction can help to keep the topic of domestic abuse relevant, noting it's unthinkable what some families are going through at the current time. Sue Crampton tweeted to say thank you for today's programme and the coverage of the domestic

violence topic. Fictionalising abuse is a wonderful way to relate and hear what it feels like from the point of view of an abused woman and her life in a refuge. Well done. There can never be enough publicity. And then exercise at home and why it matters more if you're older. Janet Ponton tweeted, best thing I ever heard for my health as a 50 plus woman. June Brown, EastEnders actress on Desert Island Discs

saying how at 90, she always gets up from chairs without using her arms, keeping leg muscles strong. I discovered muscle loss and changed my life. Linda Arbon emailed to say great exercises just now. Let's have a daily slot on Women's Hour please.

Millions of us listen to you daily. Keep up the great work. Dorcas Walters emailed with a plea for those exercise instructors losing work because of the lockdown. Please can I ask you to encourage people to first contact their local studios and teachers or the person that's been teaching them. All over the world there are self-employed exercise instructors, pilates, yoga and gyrotonic studios like mine desperately trying to move their entire business online. And many are offering low prices or donation-based classes as well as private lessons,

despite the fact they still have rent to pay on a commercial premises. But if everyone turns to celebrities who are already making a living on YouTube or other platforms, many of these people will go out of business entirely. And Beth Adlam emailed, I'm listening to the current discussion regarding women not doing as much exercise as men. Maybe it's because they remember how awful PE lessons were. Freezing on a hockey pitch as a teenager

certainly put me off exercise for life. Well, start again, Beth. You need to. Thanks to all of you who got in touch with us this morning. Don't forget, Weekend Woman's Hour is tomorrow. I'll be presenting it at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon. When you can hear again, Dr. Camilla Pang, who was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at the age of eight. She's now 26 and has a PhD in biochemistry.

Do join me tomorrow afternoon, four o'clock. Bye bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.