It isn't just women who've given birth vaginally who need to work on their pelvic floor muscles, it's all women.
Those of you who've had children by caesarean section or are childless might well be thinking, 'Oh, I don't need to do those!' but you'd be wrong.
The pelvic floor muscles are located between your legs, and run from your pubic bone at the front to the base of your spine at the back. They are in the shape of a sling and hold your bladder and urethra (the tube from which the urine comes) in place.
These muscles give you control over your bladder and are used to urinate. They relax at the same time as the bladder contracts (tightens) in order to let the urine out.
When it's at its best, one of these muscles, the pubococcygeus (PC) or "love" muscle, helps a woman to have strong and lasting orgasms.
But with age, pregnancy, and even lack of sex, this pelvic muscle can weaken. Over time, your body's natural muscle tone deteriorates. Things become less elastic. The tissues expand but don't return to their previous tension.
Once you hit the Menopause, irrespective of whether your body has undergone the strains and stresses of pregnancy and childbirth, those signs will really start to kick in.
Suddenly, you feel the need to pee more often. If you jump or sneeze, you may start to notice the most fractional loss of control and subsequent leakage.
When you are making love, your body no longer experiences the sensations so keenly. The more intense orgasms occur less frequently. Urinary tract infections flare up more often and you may become aware of hormonally-related personal dryness.
Most frightening of all, slack pelvic floor muscles are the main cause of prolapsed womb in women, and there is evidence that regular kegel and pelvic floor exercises avoid the need for unnecessary hysterectomies, an operation which is becoming increasingly common in these days of obese lethargy.
However, if you start to exercise your kegel and pelvic floor muscles routinely, that grim future can be prevented and any current problems can be alleviated and improved.
In a survey conducted for the UK Channel 4's Embarrassing Bodies series, a large percentage of British women were found to have impaired pelvic floor muscle tone, whether they were mothers or not.
There are two ways of addressing the issue. You can work those muscles manually with a regime of exercises designed to work the pubococcygeus muscle and surrounding tissue. These are known as PC exercises, Pelvic Floor exercises or Kegel exercises after Dr Arnold Kegel, the gynaecologist who originally developed them.
The regular performance of Kegel and pelvic floor exercises has been proven to help in the treatment of vaginal prolapse and the prevention of uterine prolapse in women, as well as improving problems with bladder and fecal incontinence and poor sexual response.
The problem is that many women who work on their Kegel and pelvic floor exercises are doing them incorrectly and so there is no improvement in muscle tone.
A more proactive alternative is to invest in an insertable internal aid. There are balls and cones that you grip whilst you are doing your kegel and pelvic floor exercises. But there are also battery-powered stimulators with pre-set programmes that are designed to focus on urge, stress or general tone-up. These can do the job with or without your input. However, the best results are always obtained if you grip with your internal muscles each time they stimulate a muscle contraction.
Whichever method you choose, exercising on a regular basis has been shown to improve the quality of the muscle tone around your bladder, vagina and anus. Issues with incontinence are alleviated and sexual activity becomes more pleasurably intense.
As the old adage goes, 'Use it or lose it' and the huge benefits of improved pelvic health through regular kegel and pelvic floor exercises are no exception.
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