Health, fitness + wellbeing
Articles from Natalie’s blog (est. 2012) covering health from multiple perspectives, including:
holistic wellbeing (including mental, physical, emotional and spiritual wellness), biohacking, natural living, and life with a chronic condition (including personal experiences with cystic fibrosis and diabetes).
The Need-To-Know on Your Pelvic Floor + How Elvie Helps You To Do Your Kegels
Ladies, do you do pelvic floor exercises?
Honestly?
I’m sure, like me, you’re aware of how important they are. Yet, also like me, when it comes to training these muscles, you’ll probably remember that they exist every fortnight or so, and exercise them by squeezing ‘down there’ how ever many times you deem useful (10, 15, 20 times?) before getting distracted by something else.
Needless to say, there are lots of things wrong with training your pelvic floor muscles in this way:
* You don’t really know if you are squeezing the muscles correctly
* You aren’t sure if you are squeezing for long enough, hard enough, or a many times as you should
* You don’t have any way to measure your progress
* It’s boring as hell, making it very easy to become distracted
Thankfully, some very clever ladies out there have designed a sleek little gadget and app called Elvie to overcome all of these problems.
But first, here's why doing kegels is important in the first place...
Using Data to Monitor Your Health: What I Learnt From A Medical Trial
It’s no secret that I’m fascinated by health monitoring and the increasingly amazing options for tracking our health and fitness that are coming about thanks to new tech.
Over two and a half years ago, I watched an episode of BBC Horizon called Monitor Me, which I think was a cataylst for my curiosity.
Since then, I have tried things like tracking my nutrient intake with MyFitnessPal and recording my activity and workouts with fitness trackers, but as I mentioned in my article on wearable tech, I struggle to find the value in using any devices over an extended period of time.
I think part of the reason that I was so fascinated by Monitor Me, was that everyone featured on the show was recording their data for really specific purposes; they knew what they were looking for in their data and they had a specific outcome in mind, be it weight-loss or better sporting performance. Plus, they were working with professionals in their field.
This kind of structure is something that I’ve lacked so far when toying with health and fitness tech, simply because I haven’t needed it.
Now, that has changed.
I’ve pushed my interest a little further and got involved with a clinical trial to see if self-monitoring can have a direct, positive effect on health.