It starts small. A bit of a leak when you sneeze. Then you stop wearing
the light trousers. Then you check where the toilets are before you go
anywhere new. Then you skip the trampoline with the kids.
Nothing about it is dramatic. That is why it wins. It shrinks your life
one small choice at a time, and you barely notice it happening.
You are nowhere near alone in this.
A study of more than 3,000 women going through the menopause found
57% of them had some degree of leaking. One in four was
using protection or changing underwear several days a
week.1
And here is the part that should make you angry. Across nearly 20,000
women in another study, only a quarter had ever mentioned it to a
doctor.2 A 2025 survey found that
fewer than 15% of women with symptoms had been assessed or
treated for them.3
So most women carry this. Most women say nothing. And the ones who do
get told to do their pelvic floor exercises.
Then you try. You do them for four days. You forget on day five. You
remember in the car two weeks later. And you feel like the problem is you.
It isn't you. It's the ask.
Pelvic floor exercises work. Doctors recommend
them first for good reason. But they ask you to do a thing you cannot see,
cannot feel much of, and cannot check you are doing right. Several times a
day. For months.
Even the most disciplined person is not going to do that every day for
months on end. Researchers say the same thing. One paper puts it plainly:
the training is tedious and monotonous, it is hard to be sure you are doing
it right, and patients find it hard to stick
with.4
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