What's the point of kegels?

When Dr. Arnold Kegel noticed a high frequency of urinary incontinence in women after they had given birth, he designed the Kegel exercise. Join Molly and Cristen as they explore this technique, from the story of its creation to modern Kegel exercises.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom? Never told you?
From House top works dot Com. Hello and welcome to
the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristin. Kristin question

(00:20):
for you. Have you ever experienced urinaryan continents? I'm not
going to do that, all right, Well, I shall be
open and forthright and tell you that I feel that
I'm destined to because I've been to a lot of
family gatherings. Yeah, where you know people you beat your pants.
Not me myself, but um, I'm destined for because the
ladies and my family get to laugh and real hard

(00:41):
at something and then they all got to run to
the bathroom. And if we're in a place with limited bathrooms,
watch out. You know. Welly, you tend to you tend
to be pretty private about about your personal life on
the podcast, and I am, well, because I'm telling stories
about other people right now. Yeah, but it's reflective on yourself.
I will. I think this is a very this is
a moment, Moll. You relieve you really open up. Well,

(01:03):
I think it shows I have a really funny family
that we laugh so much that uh that that we
pe a lot. I mean, you bring an extra pair
of pants to our family or union on my family.
So yeah, I do feel that I'm gonna have probably
if genetics plays into this all, which I believe it does,
I'm going to have some problems with your near incontinence
putting it out there right now. But luckily this week

(01:25):
I learned all about the exercise I need uh to
stave that off, you know. And that is the cagel,
the kegel, which some people pronounce keegel, but Webster's Medical
Dictionary pronounces of both keegel and kegel. Either will do
tomato tomato, keegle, kegel, and we're gonna call it kegel

(01:45):
because it rhymes with bagel, which is what I have
for breakfast this morning. There were going so now I
will forever associate bagels with urine. And you're p P
and Grandma's well, Kristen, leaving that aside ruining my favorite
breakfast food by mixing it up with urine. I want

(02:06):
to take us back to the nineteen forties when one
doctor Arnold cagele O B. G. Y N in California said,
I am noticing that there's a lot of urinary incontinence
after women have a child. I have come up with
this exercise to strengthen the pubvit floor, and I'm going
to name it after myself because we all love being
associated with the pelvit floor. Gave birth to the cable exercise,

(02:28):
and you know it's it's considered sort of the primary
your first response to urinaryan continents. And that's funny because
I was really surprised to learn about this incontinence link
because I've always heard about Cagles in the context of sex. Well,
and that's the thing is that Dr Cagle gives us
exercise to all these women so that they can strengthen
their public floors and hopefully experienced your incidence of incontinence,

(02:51):
and then like later, these women would whisper to him.
By the way, I'm finding that this improves my orgasm,
and uh, it's a fortunate side effect that Lady Max
have picked up on since then. But the main reason
it's usually used is if you have uh urinaryan continence
and men who have urinarian continence after a prostate surgery,

(03:12):
so it is for men and women. So a lot
of people probably know what Kegle exercise is involved, but
let's get down de brass tacks about it. Okay. It
basically involves clenching your pubococka gus muscle, over and over.
And the way people tell you to find this is
to pretend you're urinating and then pretend like you have

(03:34):
to stop uh, the urine from flowing. And when that
muscle is the muscle you're supposed to squeeze. But doctors say,
don't actually do that when you are urinating. Just maybe
once like to figure out the muscle, but don't do
it over and over again. That's not not going to
help things. And while you're doing your kegels, you want
to keep the following muscles relaxed, which would be the

(03:55):
abdominal muscles, your buttocks, and your thighs. You like a
full body clench. You just focus on the pubo cocas
is what it was. Yeah, if you if you squeeze
the wrong muscles with you, you're working the wrong thing
um And some people just can't figure out which muscle
they need to be squeezing. And if that's the case,
you can get to a doctor and they'll do a
method called biofeedback, which is where they will essentially put

(04:19):
electrodes on the abdomen and along the anal area to
make sure you are squeezing the right thing. But if
you really want to maximize your kegel exercise, there's some
equipment you can use too. Yes, you can use cones
and weight vaginal cones. Yeah, there are a lot of
health stye out there about the efficiency of vaginal cones. Yeah.

(04:42):
You basically like put these weights. Um, if you are
a woman, you have some lady parts, you put weights
essentially into your vagina and clench it to hold it
in there. Yea, But you don't have to. You can
just do the regular Yeah, no weights at all. And
if you do that, they recommend that you do it
on an empty bladder, that you tighten the muscle and

(05:03):
hold for account of ten and then relax completely for
account of ten. And the sources we found recommended doing
ten exercises three times a day. You can do them
lying down, you can do them sitting in a chair,
and don't expect to see a ton of results for
about four or six weeks, and supposedly after three months
you would see a quote major change. And these are

(05:25):
the exercises that you'll always see people say you can
do it, like while you're on the bus, you can
do it while you're standing in line. I might be
doing some right now. Yeah, so, um, you know it's
it's not something that requires a ton of I was
a better say, requires a ton of equipment. But we
just talked about vaginal cones. But if you're doing your
basic kegel, that's the one that everyone's like, do it
all the time, do it everywhere. And I did find

(05:47):
a kegel song that if you need help musically, if
you know, working out to Madonna or Lady Gaga doesn't
do it for you, you you can download a kegel song
that will tell you when to squeeze. Um. I think
if you just google cagele song and be pretty easy
to find. Um. But let's talk a little bit more
about incontinent since it is something that so many women
deal with. Yes, among women ages thirty to thirty nine,

(06:11):
and that's pretty young. Nine, Well, they probably just had
a baby, yeah, and estimated twenty eight percent. And that's
where that one in three comes in. I experienced some
loss of urinary control, and you know you you made
the point of saying that's pretty young. I think that
we do all associate urinary in continence with an older woman. Yeah, reminder,
older man, remember that old sn L sketch. Oops, I

(06:32):
craped my pants? Yes, I mean this is really what's
coming to mind, over and over again, the sweet this
rechieving ford to a giant diaper um. There's another image
is gonna be hard to get out in my head.
The rest of the podcast, christon that together with your
bagels welling. And because we do associate it with an
elder elder group of people, very few women talk to

(06:53):
their doctors about it. There are some estimates that say
less than who experienced this talk to their doctors about it.
I've seen something that says like a quarter of women
talk to their doctors about it, and they'll suffer for
years and years before they'll bring it up. You know,
I was reading about how a lot of women experience
this when they're jogging. They'll just be jogging and all
of a sudden urine and they'll just stop jogging. And

(07:14):
you know, that's really not the best answer. You should
probably see if you can maybe giggle it out before
you give up jogging altogether. And there's a link between
incontinence and depression, not surprisingly, and it's sort of there's
a correlation causation question that comes up a lot with it.
We're not they're not sure whether or not it's the
incontinence that leads to depression, because it's got to be

(07:34):
tough if you're going throughout your your day to day
routine not knowing whether or not you're gonna need a
change of pants, um or if the serotonin neurotransmitters or
somehow interfering with chemicals that affect the bladder. Urinary incontinence
can also happen during sex. So we're mixing two of
the most awkward things to talk about, sex and urine.

(07:58):
So be aware of that. And so that the point
of matter is is that usually if you do ask
a doctor about it, one of the first things they
probably will ask is if you are doing cagles. So
even though I mean, thinking about this, even though there's
a I would say, a misconception about the point of kegles.
You know, in popular culture it's all related to sex.
But maybe that's a good thing because, um, you know,

(08:18):
since incontinence is affecting so many younger women, you know,
and it might be kind of taboo, maybe it's a
good thing that the kegles are this kind of accepted
exercise because we related to the bedroom rather than the bathroom. Now,
I did come across one interesting article that I wanted
to talk about because I feel like with the proliferation
of cable exercises information in like Cosmo and Glamor and

(08:41):
all that, because we do associate it with with sex,
there's this question of when should you start doing cagles
And a lot of the research about incontinent says you
you sort of start once you have that problem. But
is it preventative? And I don't think doctors really know that.
But a really interesting article from two thousand eight in
the New York Times talked about this woman and Dr

(09:02):
Laurie Romanzi, who opened a gynecological practice that was sort
of based around the idea of a pelvic spa and
what was essentially, you know, a gynecological exam turned into
this treatment where she taught you how to do a
cagel and you treated it like a spa day. Yeah,

(09:23):
And it was called FIT P I T. What was
the acronym stand for? Do you remember? Pelvic Health Integrated Techniques?
And we try to figure out whether or not this
place in New York is still open because the article
is from two thousand and eight, and we're not exactly sure.
I don't know if I don't know if via the
cagel SPA really picked up. And there was a lot
of criticism in this article about you know, it's not

(09:44):
clear whether you know if someone who hasn't had a baby,
who's very young comes to this doctor and learns how
to properly do a cagel. This doctor is alleging that
it's quote the dental floss of feminine fitness. It's just
something you should do to keep the area into shape.
But a lot of doctors who responded to her and said,
there's no evidence that a young woman who starts doing

(10:06):
cable exercises will decrease her chances of pelvic problems later
in life. So maybe they still can get some of
those sexual benefits. They'll experienced stronger orgasms, have a better
time in the bedroom, but we don't know if it
affects the incontinence problems quite so much. But before we
wrap things up, we should mention that in addition to

(10:26):
cagle exercises, there are some simple lifestyle change will not
necessarily simple, but lifestyle changes that people can make that
can help reduce incontinence, such as losing weight, reducing their
intakes of liquids, and cutting back on caffeine, booze and smoking.
And don't forget if you have trouble doing your cables

(10:47):
by yourself, get a man in on the game with you.
They do it the same way. They try and wait
for that muscle to stop the our nation and then
they just squeeze. It isn't her kegles? Isn't her cagles? Normally,
you and I can you know if if we ever
needed a partner up, since you're kind of worried about
your continance, I would I would do some kegles. You
would do kegles with me? Yeah? But I think is

(11:08):
on the sweetest you bring? You bring the bagels, I'll
do some kegles. Awesome, it's a date, all right? All right?
Let us know what you guys think. Have you had
great experiences with kegles? Have you seen them work in
your own life? Are you annoyed that we haven't been
calling them keegels the whole time? I bet there's a
lot of you are. Would you go to a kegel spa?
That's an interesting question. And as always. You can email

(11:29):
us any of those thoughts or anything else in your
mind at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
And I shall read an email from that very address,
and it is from Grace, and she writes, I was
clearing my room and when I was looking at my closet,
I found an old American girl dolf, and when I
was about ten, it was Molly, who was always one

(11:50):
of my favorites because we looked alike. And I think
Molly is a fantastic name, which is Grace. Thank you
for saying that. Um. But then I started reminisce about
the days when I played with my American girl doll
with my younger sister who had Kirsten, but because she
couldn't pronounce it at the time she was barely five,
she became Kristen. I realized it probably isn't that interesting,
but I thought it was quite a coincidence that my

(12:11):
favorite thing to pass the time when I was kid,
when I was a kid was Kristen and Molly. And
now I listened to you too, that is adorable. Is
that not the most adorable thing you've ever heard? And
it's so cute? Um, Well, I've got an email here
from Tom, and this is in response in older podcasts
we did on whether men and women donate differently, and
he writes in your podcasts used words such as stingy

(12:32):
and selfish and describing men's donating habits compared to women.
Based on your other podcasts, I'm surprised you didn't talk
about the role we have in society and that traditionally
I would say that still statistically a man is a
provider and must make money for his family. I think
that plays a and this isn't all caps. People a
huge role in donating habits family or not. This is

(12:54):
in our d n a to provide and prepare. I
know women are making more money and making a jump
up the professional ladder, but let's not forget you can
still marry a rich man donate his money and not
be shunned. In our society men still have and this
is again all caps huge pressure of having to be
the provider and that plays a huge role. So there

(13:18):
you go, huge huge. I've got some huge comments for you, Tom,
and I will keep them too, what self. If you
guys have any comments to send our way again our
email as mom stuff and how stuff works dot com.
Hit us up on Facebook too. That's a great way
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(13:38):
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(14:06):
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