Sawbones: Kegels

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Hello, everybody, and welcome to Sawbones, a marital tour of misguided medicine.

I'm your co-host, Justin McElroy.

And I'm Sidney McElroy.

Sydney, what a pleasure it is to be here with you today.

Justin, before we get started on this week's episode, I have like a brief follow-up on last week's episode.

Okay.

So our list.

Again, an episode about exploding teeth.

Yes.

Which, as we said on the episode, as far as science knew, or at least published searchable science on the internet

that kind of stopped happening in the like the 20s except for maybe this one random thing weird thing in the 40s

kind of thing but like this doesn't really happen anymore well well science has been updated because i'm sidney mackerroy's updating science well me

by virtue of our listeners

i can't even list all of the listeners and you you didn't all say specifically if i should or not so i'm not going to name all of you but you know who you are.

All of the emails I have received about people's teeth exploding.

You got to do this study, Sydney.

I feel like we have found something that science has lost and

we can share it with the world.

Yeah.

So here is what I'm asking.

First of all, let me just say in brief.

Other people since the 1920s have had their teeth explode in their mouth very similarly.

Toothache hurts, hurts, hurts, hurts.

Pop.

Tooth explodes.

Several people described to me the way tooth shards feel in their mouth.

Unpleasant.

It always happened at the same time, which I thought was bizarre.

Did you notice that?

They all included a time and it was all the exact same time.

All the exact same time.

Yeah,

all of them happened at the exact same time.

That's not true.

That would be really wild.

Every one was at 2.30.

Every single one.

And it's like a bizarre coincidence.

I can't with you.

You're incorrigible.

So other, so yes, people have had their teeth explode.

And then there have, okay, also the one that happened in the 60s where the lady wrote in saying I put my kids' teeth on the mantle and then they exploded after they had come out of my kids' mouths.

This has happened to other people.

That was the one that I was like, well, that didn't.

It did because at least unless you are all messing with me, listeners, I had several emails, not as many as people who said their own tooth exploded in their mouth, but there were several emails from people saying that their children or friends' children, children that they knew, lost teeth

and they exploded after coming out of their mouths, whether they're on a table or a counter or whatever.

That was actually well-meaning people hitting them with a hammer to give you permission to throw them away.

They were like, This is too weird that they're keeping them.

I'm going to smash them up with a hammer when they're not looking.

Some people said they just found them split open the next day.

Other people heard the pop and went and found the tooth.

Wild.

Absolutely wild.

So anyway, the mystery lives on.

All I am asking you.

Well, yeah, what were you asking people?

Yeah, I want to, I, man, I'm not a research.

I'm a researcher in that I read about things.

I'm not a researcher in that I typically don't try to like do studies and publish research.

So I'm not promising you that anything actually.

You need someone else to do the actual work.

No, I'm not asking that.

Holy researcher.

I am not asking for that.

Although

if you want to.

Yeah, you're saying like someone out there is a tooth researcher.

Here is all I'm asking.

If you have also had a tooth explode, or you know someone who has, or if teeth have been out of, you know, fallen out of a kid's mouth and then later exploded, please continue to email me with these stories.

And if you are a tooth scientist that has been looking for a way to get your name out there, you want to collaborate with Dr.

McElroy on an incredible we can heal the rift between medicine and dentistry once and for all.

Finally.

I know you're out there.

And I don't know, especially if you're like in studying to be a dentist, if you're somewhere in the educational process right now, I know that in medical school, it can be, depending on what you want to do, really important to publish.

I didn't roll and drive that much, but I know other people do.

But if you are in a similar position where it might be important, I don't know.

I think this is fascinating.

Please continue.

What's our email address?

Sawbones at maximumfund.org.

We passed our 10-year anniversary quite recently.

A decade of podcasting.

The email has never changed.

Please share this with me.

Please.

I don't know.

I have no exact plan.

I don't want to, by the way, I'm not trying to like sell a book.

This isn't for monetary gain.

It's purely to contribute to the scientific knowledge of our world, our understanding of teeth.

And so I probably do need somebody who knows something about teeth to help me with this process.

But still, thank you for sharing your tooth stories.

That's it.

I'm not looking to profit off of this.

That says someday someone says the phrase, and then I swear to God, her tooth tooth Sydneyed right in her mouth.

Like, if it could be the Sydney effect or a Sydney

tooth explosion, okay, Justin, oh man, you just set this up so well.

Here would be the problem with that.

Okay,

I have no expertise in teeth, as we have covered.

I am not the one who first described this phenomenon, and I am not the one who's had a tooth explode.

So, I think attaching my name to this

may be ethically dicey.

Oh, okay.

I'd like to talk about Kaggle exercises

instead of that.

And you'll see why.

That was a perfect tie-in.

Have you heard of Kegels?

Yes.

Some people say Kegel's.

When I looked up the pronunciation, it said Kegel, which is what I've always said.

It's what I was taught.

I don't know what Kaggles are.

I think a lot of you probably do.

I think if you...

I'm going to explain it to you.

Yeah.

Go ahead, Justin.

Please.

Actually, no, I changed on my.

This isn't a gendered thing.

Everybody can do Kaggles.

Yes.

Yes.

This is, I wasn't about to say a gendered thing.

I think.

Oh, no, I just mean like it's okay for you to explain it because nowadays we recommend Kaggles to everyone, not just.

There was a time where only like cis women were told to do Kaggles.

This is my understanding, is that Kaggles are when you...

flex the part that makes you pee

so that you can continue to keep strong

the part that makes you pee

and it doesn't get kind of like floppy or anything or that's like like i don't know how a not good like

that's not a terrible description in all honesty okay i mean really i'll take it yeah thank you that's not a terrible compliment in case you're working score so what you're trying a kegel exercise I'll go ahead and explain what this is.

I was going to lead to that, but I'll go ahead and explain.

A kel exercise is when you, is when you contract your pelvic floor muscles.

Now, what are those?

You may be asking.

Think about your pelvis.

You've probably seen like a pelvis and a skeleton.

Yeah.

Okay.

It's easy to imagine it's kind of a bowl.

Yes.

You think about it that way?

The pelvic floor muscles are the ones that are in the bottom of the bowl.

In sort of your perineum area.

Yeah, that's down there.

Right.

And it's like the whole, but it's the whole bottom.

It attaches to the front and the back and the sides.

It's kind of a diamond-shaped band of muscular tissue some people call it a hammock

and oh a banana hammock i've heard of those like the underwear

depending on depending on what you got going on down there maybe um

but it supports the pelvic organs right

whatever those may be for you and uh

Kaggle exercises are a way of isolating those muscles, which it can take some time to figure out what exactly you're contracting, and then contracting and relaxing them.

That's a Kegel.

the important thing is knowing which muscles those are right now i like talking about this because when anybody talks about kegels to me

I subconsciously start doing kegels.

And so I like this because what I am, what I'm guessing, and please, you don't need to email and tell me about this one, but I bet some of you out there right now have been doing Kaggle exercises as I'm talking because you're thinking about it.

And I like, I like that.

I think that's an interesting phenomenon for humans.

Do they work?

I get emails a lot saying, Do Kagles work?

So I thought it was worth talking about what are Kaggles, who came up with them, who are they named for?

And is that different?

And do they actually work?

Because what they tell you is that what I will tell you as a physician is that they help with urinary incontinence.

So keep you from pain on your shot.

Yeah.

They can strengthen your pelvic floor.

They might make orgasms better.

So let's talk about it.

So the idea of trying to like consciously

contract and relax that muscle is a, is a very old one.

Okay.

So this predates, I'm going to talk about like the modern history, especially in the West of what are kegls, when did we adopt them, you know, who studied them, whatnot.

But I don't want to give you the impression that we just came up with this back in the early 1900s.

Right.

The idea of

trying to isolate and like use that muscle dates back to many ancient medical traditions.

You'll find mentions of it in traditional Chinese medicine.

You'll find the ancient Greeks and Roman physicians talking about these exercises.

And some of the yogis in traditional Indian medicine would talk about exercises you can do for your pelvic floor.

So like the idea that your spiritual, physical, sexual health was somehow tied to the health of this band of muscles, that is a very old idea.

But I want to talk about what kind of starts.

And if you look up the history of the word Kegel, you would think this history started in 1942.

So, Dr.

Arnold Kegel,

you can kind of guess where this is going,

was an American gynecologist who studied the consequences of having a weakened pelvic floor.

So, he observed in many, especially women,

especially after they had had children, they would have some of the things that can happen when that band of tissue, you know, stretches as you accommodate the growth of a uterus and then contracts again.

It's weakened by that.

Right.

You know, that makes sense.

And so its ability to support

those organs that are down there and its ability to keep, like,

if you think about when you have to pee,

there's pressure building up in your bladder.

Now, obviously, it is not purely a pressure system.

Yeah.

Because otherwise enough pressure would build up and you would just start peeing on yourself.

Yes.

And that does not happen anymore.

So

that when did that when I was a baby?

Oh, yes.

I don't anymore.

I do it in the potty potty like a big boy.

But that,

so that pressure building up would just make you pee, but it's not just that.

We have muscles that help that we can control that allow us to voluntarily hold it and then urinate at will.

Right.

If the pelvic floor, which surrounds the urethra, the tube that the pee comes through, if that starts to get weaker, it is easier for pee to just sort of come through that tube when pressure builds up.

And that can be when you have a full bladder or when you do something like cough or sneeze.

So that's a really classic thing, right?

For those of us who have had children, if you cough or sneeze, you might have a little bit of a leak.

You also worry about when those muscles become weaker, your organs kind of dropping to an extent.

Things don't fall out.

Well, they don't fall out.

That's dramatic.

They don't fall out of your body, but there are things like prolapse, especially for those of us with vaginas where your bladder can kind of start to fall down in, not literally in, but like

intrude into that space, or like your uterus can start to fall down into the vaginal canal.

So there are other things that are, I mean, it sounds like what's the big deal if every once in a while a couple drips of pea come out, but it can be a lot more severe than that.

And then there can be more complicated problems, right?

So anyway, Dr.

Kagle was studying all this and was interested in addressing those problems through the use of pelvic floor exercises, like any other muscle.

Right.

You exercise a muscle.

why can't we exercise our pelvic floor by squeezing it and releasing it and squeezing it and releasing it and exercising it and whatever?

And so he said, let's try that out and see if it changes things.

He actually studied this for like 18 years and

uh published in 1942 a study that said, or that was called a non-surgical method of increasing the tone of sphincters and their supporting structures.

And what he found was that after two to four weeks of these exercises, if you do them diligently, he said, diligently.

So you can't just sort of kind of do some Kaggles.

You got to do them regularly,

then your symptoms tended to improve.

And then he noted a little bonus.

People who did these exercises regularly and saw these other symptoms improve also noted that they were having more frequent, more intense, and more easily achievable orgasms.

I thought you were going to say bowel movements.

So imagine my surprise.

You thought as a little bonus, they were having more intense bowel movements.

More intense, easily achievable.

But more intense and more frequent as a bonus?

More intense, more frequent, more easily achievable.

I mean, for a lot of people, that sounds pretty good.

More intense.

You're going to have to explain to me why.

Sometimes you just want to feel, you know, sometimes you want to feel something.

I have had a lot of patients talk to me worried that they weren't having, that their bowel movements weren't coming easily.

sure got it that's a problem

that they weren't frequent enough i have never had a patient come to me and say chief complaint my bowel movements aren't as intense as i would like them to be yeah i mean you've you want to feel like you got some work done that's all uh he also in addition to talking about like the sort of the the um just the way that you can do these exercises he created a uh perineometer perineometer perineometer perineometer perineometer

pressure inside the vaginal canal.

Okay.

So, I mean, it's just like any other cavity, if it's closed off, there's a certain amount of air pressure in it, right?

So, any open space.

So, basically, this was a device where you could have a probe placed in the vaginal canal.

And when you contracted these muscles, you could see what kind of pressure you're able to generate inside that cavity.

And

if you have lower pressures, then these exercises might help you

because you're obviously you're not able to squeeze as much.

and then he said uh you know what also might help at home is a resistance aid

some sort of strengthening tool something

to squeeze to know you're squeezing the right thing the jade egg

well no as we have talked about before

you know i'm not gonna like save that for later please do not place jade eggs in your vaginas if you have them They the jade eggs or the vaginas.

If you have either of those,

keep them apart.

You keep them separated at all times.

Jade eggs are porous.

We've talked about this on the show before, but just in case you haven't heard that, they are made of a porous material.

They can harbor bacteria, which can then cause infections.

So, and there's no evidence that they

do anything.

So, don't, please do not place jade eggs in your vagina.

Thank you.

Period.

Thank you for that.

PSA.

So anyway, he so he said, like, if you, but if you do have something that you could like, I mean, what he's really talking about is it's like with any muscle, you have to know what muscle you're trying to isolate.

It's like if you tried to wiggle your ears.

No, that is what I've been sitting here thinking about the whole time because Cooper yesterday asked me if I could flare my nostrils.

And she was like, it's easy.

You just, and then she tried to describe it to me.

And it's like, of course, it didn't make any sense because you're not.

I don't know.

I couldn't, couldn't make it happen.

Right.

But trying to isolate that seems like a similar exercise.

So he said, like, you could use something that would help you figure that out.

You're wiggling wiggling your ears now.

Thank you.

So, so he created Kaggles, right?

Well, he studied Kaggles.

He did name them Kaggles.

Oh, but he did.

Dr.

Arnold Kaggle.

But he was not the creator of Kaggles.

Oh, man.

I'm going to tell you who did create Kaggles, but first, we got to go to the billing department.

Let's go.

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You know, I realized something during the break, Sydney.

I can only wiggle my ears by making, like, the process of me wiggling my ears involves me getting a real stupid grin on my face.

Like, I really think it's cool that I'm wiggling my ears.

Like, we'll call it a poop-eating grin if our cut if our show cussed.

And so, I can't do it without having an expression on my face, like, check this out.

Because I have to kind of raise my eyebrows and squint my eyes a little bit.

So, it looks like I think, oh, yeah, here it goes.

I'm wiggling them.

i like how you said if our show cussed as if our show the entity

like i will just say i cuss right in my in my life i do too but someone doesn't know that's so okay

so the resurgence of the kegel

while named and certainly verified by dr arnold kegel and let me say he did a lot of work specifically on an issue that largely plagues you know people with vaginas, people who bear children, people with uteruses.

And any doctor who is willing to put time and effort into studying problems among that population of patients deserves some applause, right?

Because historically,

people with vaginas have been pretty much excluded from the narrative.

Generally speaking, people who identify as women are excluded from a lot of medical research.

And so the idea that he was investigating a problem

that wasn't a big deal to men is notable.

It's notable.

So I don't want to say like, I'm slamming Dr.

Kagle.

Like, and the fact that he even commented on like, hey, another benefit of this is that the women who he did the study on have better orgasms as if that's a good thing, like that, which it is, of course.

But at the time,

1942.

Yeah.

And so I don't want to say like this was a bad guy, but.

He was not the first one to introduce the Kagle.

That was the work of two women, Margaret Morris and Minnie Randall.

Now, you may know the name Margaret Morris if you are someone who has studied dance or is familiar with the history of dance.

I don't, I don't personally, so this is not a name that was recognizable to me, but as I read more about this person, I thought, oh, I bet this is a big name in the world of dance that I just don't know.

Morris was a very famous British ballet dancer.

She was born in 1891 and danced from a very, very young age.

I mean, from like seven, eight years old, was already on stage performing

and would go on to study dance,

studied from a lot of the greats of the time, learning their styles, the classical styles of ballet, and then expanding upon them, adding more athletic movement to dance and like jumping and things.

And so

created her own style, sort of advanced our understanding of what can be considered ballet.

Cool.

So was it was very talented and a big name in ballet.

She felt like, as she developed her own styles and systems of dance, that dance could be used as exercise, physiotherapy, as ways of teaching our bodies how to move, correcting our posture, easing chronic pain.

You know, she was very interested in dance as a way to do those things, not just express what dance does, not just be a beautiful art form, but in its therapeutic

possibilities.

Specifically, she felt like it had a lot of possibilities for people who had limitations in their mobility whether that's from some sort of congenital disorder or from some injury that they sustained she thought that she could work with those populations of patients kind of in a physical therapy realm through dance to help them improve their mobility and strength so in 1925 morris lectured on this system of movement that she had created to a bunch of doctors in london and how she felt like it was going to be beneficial to patients.

And it was, it was really well received.

And a lot of people

said, like, you know, I think that there's something there now obviously she had not been trained in any sort of physical therapy at the time so in order to legitimize her beliefs in her system at that point which was really I mean it was really a dance sure

she studied at London St.

Thomas Hospital and her instructor was Minnie Randall who was a midwife and head of physical therapy and maternity care at the hospital at the time.

So specifically, she worked with somebody who was interested not just in physical therapy and the use of like movement and as a form of exercise and to strengthen and stretch and loosen your body and that kind of thing, but also was a midwife.

And so, sort of had this cross-interest in

things that would affect your pelvic floor.

Does that make sense?

Like, you can kind of see where the seeds of this come from.

And she would actually go on to become a founding member of the Obstetrics Physiotherapist Association.

So, the idea that there are things we can do with our bodies to move those of us who can become pregnant before and after to improve our mobility and physicality and you know which is i mean as someone who has been pregnant myself

yeah i wish i had been a lot more active during because afterwards it was hard to get back to that um so morris collaborated with randall and they published a book called maternity and post-operative exercises in diagrams and words.

And now this was not a book about pelvic floor

exercises.

It was a book about a lot of different exercises, right?

Because Morris's main area of expertise was more the entire body.

And she's a dancer, of course.

But there was a section in the book where they described how to contract and relax your pelvic floor muscles.

So they described what we now call Kegel exercises.

and specifically said this would be a way that was recommended both during pregnancy and then after pregnancy as a way to prevent on the front end and then treat any incontinence.

So if you are losing urine, unable to hold in your urine, this would be a way to help fix that.

And the way they put it is that women should try to, quote, invert the sphincters until it becomes habitual.

Now, I know invert the sphincters feels like a weird way to put it, but if you think about

you're doing it now and you're thinking about is that like inverting the sphincter.

But it's kind of like...

It's like you're trying to i mean if i could be a little longer it's like you're trying to to pinch right yeah

the best way i have described it to people before trying to pinch and pee at the same time

it's

the best way i've described it to people is

if

for some reason you were you were well i for me sitting you would not be sitting standing or perhaps you'd like to sit i don't know do you ever sit to pee do you want to share that?

Do I ever sit to pee?

I mean, I see you stand to pee because sometimes you pee with the door open, but like, do you ever?

I don't want to talk

about this anymore.

I just realized.

I don't want to talk to you.

But you, if you suddenly stop the flow of urine.

Yes.

That's how the drops end up on the floor.

That's what happens there.

If you feel.

Yeah.

Especially for those of us with vaginas.

That's a very useful way to think about it.

Stop peeing suddenly midstream.

Yeah.

There you go.

Now do that, only not when you're peeing.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then don't let it go when you're sitting back at your desk or whatever.

Continue to pee in the toilet and then empty it and then do, don't pee at your desk.

Don't pee at your desk.

But you can do Kegels at your desk.

That is totally fine.

There are no rules.

And there should never be rules about that.

If there are, you're in a dystopia.

Try to get out.

Honestly, if that was part of Project 2025, I would not be shocked.

If part of it is banning Kegels at our desks, not be shocked.

So anyway, Morris not only said, like, you should do these exercises, this would be good for you.

And, and, and I should say, under the uh tutelage of Minnie Randall.

So, like, the two of them are working together.

Not only did they say this, Morris actually recommended like a soundtrack, like, had classical music selections

that she said would be useful to like do these exercises too.

Nice.

Which I had, I had this thought: like,

what would I do if I had to pick a song to do Kegel exercises to?

Um,

Hmm.

Hot Stepper by Anakonsee.

Is that what you would pick?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, just something with some panache, you know, something with some pop.

I don't know why, but the first song, and now the only song I'm ever going to think about for the rest of my life while I do Kaggles

is the theme to Dawson's Creek.

I don't want to wait for my life to be over.

I want to know right now.

I don't know why, but in my head, I was like, that's the song.

That's the Kaggles song.

I don't know why.

I feel like Where Have All the Cowboys Gone would be a better Kaggles song, but anything for the Pollock Hole.

You're going to think about it now.

You're going to think about the next time you're doing Kaggles, you're going to be sitting there thinking,

Open up your morning lights.

Okay.

Anyway,

So, in, and then following that, Randall published a book, Training for Childbirth from the Mother's Point of View.

And again, she described in this book that you could

squeeze these muscles and it would be a way to strengthen those pelvic floor muscles to prevent like peeing on yourself and all that kind of thing.

And then specifically mentioned, like, this is a good idea after giving birth.

It's a good idea to practice doing this every time you cough or sneeze.

Okay.

Because otherwise, you might pee on yourself.

Yes.

And

there are many people out there who are nodding along because they do this every time they cough or sneeze because they don't want to pee on themselves and they know exactly what I'm talking about.

And I just want you to know you're not alone.

There's a lot of us out there.

So

to be fair, after all this work was published is when Dr.

Kagle did his study.

and published his study.

And he did, I mean, it is noted that he was studying these problems among his patients for almost two decades prior to publishing his work.

Right.

So like a lot of scientific advancements, stuff is happening at the same time.

Like there's a vibe and everybody's kind of feeling the vibe, but somebody claims it first.

Dr.

Kagle did study it,

which, I mean,

it's so hard to criticize, especially women scientists at the time, for not being able to publish a peer-reviewed journal article because it was so much more difficult, especially as a, I mean, if you consider this unlikely pairing of a, of a classical ballet dancer and a midwife physical therapist who are trying to work together to share this information largely with a female audience,

they are not going to have kind of the social power to get that right to publish a study in a peer-reviewed journal in the 1940s that Dr.

Arnold Kagel, respected

an obstetrician, a gynecologist, is going to have.

But he did the science.

And that is important, right?

Even if we kind of think something works and we have our own experience or anecdotal evidence, it's important that we do the science, that we have a control group and that we have a test group and that we monitor the two groups and we compare the results and we actually try to see if something works because there are lots of times where something feels like it should work and we think it does work and then you study it and find out it doesn't.

So he did do the science.

I think that that is.

That's important to note.

I will say, as I was reading into this, do you know, Justin, this is not going going to shock you at all, and I don't think it'll shock our listeners.

It is much more common for when a man discovers something

for him to name it after himself than when a woman discovers something for her to name it after herself.

And I don't mean that more things are named after men than women because what you're going to say to me is, well, that's because men were only the ones allowed to be scientists, and so there were a lot more.

No, I mean that if you control for how many things were discovered by men and women, men are just just generally more likely to name it after themselves, whereas women are more likely to name it something else.

So

you can just always

think about that all you want.

But I just, I think whether it's a parasite or a plant, you're going to find more named after men than you are after women.

And it's not just because there were more men scientists for a long time.

So do Kegel's work?

With all this information about Kegels, we've known about them, especially in the West.

We have known about them in a very codified medical, medical, like therapeutic way since the 40s.

Do they work?

Yes.

They do.

They do.

We have had repeated studies and they've gone back and looked at multiple studies, all kind of put together meta-analyses to say, do Kegels work?

And when we're talking about specifically to try to prevent and treat urinary incontinence, peeing on yourself, yes.

Kaggles do have a benefit.

And when they've tried to even challenge like other ways, like, is it just some sort of exercise?

They've even tested it against kind of alternative exercise therapies or like, I think what they, what I read this really interesting study and I think that what they were looking into were some of the like wellness sort of like

mix, like some of the modern mix, like the goop stuff, the mixing of the medical and the spiritual into this new wellness category that really isn't born of any.

specific spiritual religious tradition is just kind of our own new Western creation.

And they compared those sorts of different physical activities with Kaggles, and Kaggles still are better.

They went out, they do something, and these other activities don't necessarily.

So it's not just placebo.

It's not just an exercise.

It is specifically this exercise.

If you do them right,

the data for things, and this is true for prolapse, it's true for incontinence.

The data for the sexual piece of it, does it increase your sensitivity, sexual arousal, ability to achieve orgasm, ability to achieve better or more frequent orgasms, that piece of it, the data is a little weaker.

It's not as strong.

I will say it's probably,

no, I will tell you, it has not been as studied as extensively as whether or not they help you from peeing on yourself.

Yeah.

And I will say also that you have to do them right.

So you have to know what muscles.

you're using.

And that can take some practice.

If you're doing Kegels wrong, they probably won't do anything.

And so sometimes biofeedback can be helpful.

And that means we find a way to help you isolate what those muscles are.

They do that sometimes for, we've talked about this before on the show, tension headaches.

So if you look at, if you put your hand on your forehead, all the way across your forehead, like you're feeling for a fever, there's a big band of muscle there, your frontalis muscle.

And when that gets tight, you get a tension headache.

You can train yourself to relax that muscle.

That's hard to do.

And so sometimes they can hook you up to little electrodes to stimulate it so you can feel what it feels like to contract and feel what it feels like to relax until you can do it consciously right so like a similar thing can be done when it comes to kegels and that's where all these newfangled devices come in because if you look there are lots of kegel

weights kegel keglaters kegel kegel masters kegel kegel stands and then like some with the kind of jade egg type vibes to them yeah um did Did you hear when I said Kaggle stands?

I didn't know if you missed that.

No, I miss Kaggle stands.

If you were having trouble isolating what muscles to use, I could see like some of them are just sort of like balls, tiny balls that you can insert into the vaginal canal and then squeeze to feel like if I'm holding it in there, I'm using the right muscles.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Okay.

So there are ones that like, can help through that biofeedback mechanism.

And then if you're really into like that, I think it's kind of like the apps where you can track different things like your water intake and your sleep and stuff.

There are Bluetooth things

where like your phone will get little dings when you're doing them right.

And so if you like that kind of, you know, like positive reinforcement, they do that.

Now, do you need any of these devices?

No.

If you, if you are doing Kaggles appropriately, there is no evidence to suggest.

And they've actually done a 2019 meta-analysis where they looked at 11 different super popular Kaggle devices and the evidence for all of them is pretty thin.

That doesn't mean they don't work, but it does mean that they're not necessarily any better than just doing a Kaggle on your own.

It is important that you do them correctly.

And I will say if you decide to buy one of these devices, again, if you know how to do Kaggles appropriately, you don't need them.

I would not.

personally recommend to one of my patients that they spend $300 plus on one of these very advanced technological gadgets if that really brings you joy.

But I don't, I, that would not be my personal recommendation.

And I would make sure that the material is medical grade because, again, back to the Jade Egg conversation, something that is porous.

You don't just want to, you don't want to just put anything in your body.

We've talked about this on the tampons episode, right?

You want to be careful about the things that you decide to insert in your body and know what's there and know that there are materials that will not harbor bacteria, will not grow things that can cause infections,

and that you can clean properly between use.

But generally speaking, Kaggles are good.

They were created by women.

Hooray for Kaggles.

Hooray for Kaggles.

Thank you so much for listening to our podcast.

We hope you've enjoyed yourself and learned a little something.

Go spread the word that women invented Kaggles.

Spread the word.

Tell a friend.

Thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their song Medicines as the intro and outro of our program.

Thanks to you so much for listening.

We really appreciate it.

And I hope you have a lovely day.

Till then, be sure to join us again next time for Salt Buns.

My name is Justin McElroy.

I'm Sidney McElroy.

And as always, don't drill a hole in your head.

All right.

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