Practical tools

Four pages built to be used rather than read once. Each is plain enough to print, and none of them asks for an email address or stores anything.

Reference pages explain. These four do something. They exist because the two moments when good information matters most are the weeks when a person is trying to change something on their own, and the ten minutes when they are finally sitting in front of a clinician.

The eight week pelvic floor programme

Most pelvic floor advice stops at the instruction to squeeze. That is not a programme. Muscle training needs a starting point, a defined number of sets, a hold time that increases as strength improves, adequate rest between contractions, and a rule for when to move up. The eight week programme supplies all of that, in a table that can be followed from a phone screen, along with the signs that it is working and the signs that it is the wrong programme for a particular problem. That last part matters: strengthening is the correct approach for a weak, poorly coordinated pelvic floor and the wrong approach for a floor that is already overactive.

The symptom finder

Symptoms rarely arrive with the right vocabulary attached. Someone searching for a burning feeling that is worse when sitting is unlikely to type the word vulvodynia, and someone describing a dragging heaviness by the end of the day may not know the word prolapse. The symptom finder is a table that starts from the description and points to the page that covers it, with a note on which entries need an appointment rather than reading.

Questions for your doctor

A general practice appointment is short, and a great deal of the value in it depends on what gets asked in the first two minutes. The question lists are grouped by appointment type: a cervical screening appointment, a menopause consultation, an appointment about painful sex, and an appointment about a suspected vulval skin condition. Each list is short on purpose. Three good questions asked calmly are worth more than a page of them.

The menopause symptom record

Symptoms that fluctuate are almost impossible to describe accurately from memory, and menopausal symptoms fluctuate more than most. A record kept for several weeks turns a vague account into something a clinician can work with, and it also reveals patterns the person keeping it had not noticed. The symptom record gives a structure for that, with guidance on what to note, how to score it, and how long to keep it going before the record is useful.

Printing them

Three of the four are designed to work on paper. The programme table fits on one side of a sheet and is easier to follow taped inside a cupboard door than opened on a phone three times a day. The symptom record has to be on paper, because the point of it is a weekly mark that takes ten seconds. The question lists work best written out by hand, with the two or three that matter most circled, because an appointment is not the moment to be scrolling.

Nothing on these pages is stored, submitted or sent anywhere. There is no form to fill in, no account, and no email address to give. Anything written down stays with the person who wrote it, which is the appropriate arrangement for a record of symptoms that most people would not want held by anyone else.

How to use them

None of these pages replaces an assessment. The programme assumes a pelvic floor that is weak rather than tight, the symptom finder points towards likely topics rather than diagnoses, and the question lists are prompts rather than a script. Where a page needs an examination or a professional judgement, it says so and stops.

Last reviewed: September 2026