Hello, welcome back. So today I'm going to take you for a journey around my village because I go for a walk with my dog around the village. So I'm in Cheddar. So if you've ever heard of Cheddar Gorge, it's there. And around Cheddar recently with the warm weather over the summer, there has been lots of water mains that have burst and that just ripping water everywhere.

Now I walk a very similar route pretty much every morning because I walk my husband to work. We always joke just to make sure that he goes, but it's just a nice way for us to have a little chat on the way and then I walk the dog and then come back home and then I get ready for my working day. But on this route, there has been at least two or three water mains that have burst and bubbling up through. Now,

These have been going on for months. Now I noticed the other day after literally months and months, one of them had been fixed. But there's several others that are still leaking. And it just made me think, what is it that is preventing them from fixing it? Now we know if it's going to be the council, it's going to take ages to come out. But if it's water company, again, it's money. But you think that by having all of that water,

flooding out, we are wasting not only water, but money. And the longer something stays broken, potentially it could then damage all of the concrete or tarmac around. It might be that somebody falls over in the water and then they get sued because they've injured this person. And it just, took months for this one to be fixed. And then

There's loads others around the village as well that just just seeping up and bubbling and just think surely, like the old saying, a stitch in time saves nine. If you've got a little hole in something, you stitch it up quickly and then you stop it from getting a bigger hole. Just after I'd put all this into a nice email to my clients, a week or so later, lo and behold,

We went out the front of our property and our water main wasn't just seeping, it was like bubbling over and almost to the point of spurting out. And then you had loads of people that were walking past going, ⁓ look, it looks like the mains has burst. And somebody had already actually reported it, thankfully. So we went online and reported it. But this was on Saturday of a bank holiday weekend.

So it did say that nobody would look at your online reports until the next working day. So that would be Tuesday. And I'm thinking, ⁓ my goodness, this is like three days that we potentially have to wait with all of this water bubbling up. I used to be really scared to ring anybody up or sort anything out. And I would get really stressed about things. I would worry about it all the time. It's like,

what if it's going to cost us loads of money? What's it going to, how long is it going to take to fix? But I have been working on my mindset, the fact that we can only control our response to certain situations. We can't control anything else that happens. I couldn't control that that was going to burst or how to fix it. I don't know anything about water mains. However, I can control how I respond to that situation. So I stayed calm.

I looked online, I did the online little report that you had to do, but then I thought, we can't wait until then. And they did have an emergency number, but the little write up by the emergency number was trying to put you off from ringing it. But I thought, no, this is actually a lot of water and we need somebody to come out as quickly as possible. So I rang up the emergency number and told them what was happening.

said, they would try and get somebody out today, but it's generally within 24 hours. So it might be someone tomorrow. They can't necessarily fix it, but they will have a look at it and see whether anything needs to be dug up or anything else. And I'm like, no, because we've only recently had our driveway done. And I'm like, if they kind of dig up, I'm like, no, they're going to ruin it. I'm like, no, keep calm. And then luckily within two hours, a chap turned up and had a look. He knocked on the door.

and said that it's going to be at least 20 minutes for him to look at it and that you wouldn't have any water for that time. So I'm okay, 20 minutes I can cope with. But he said it wasn't necessarily going to be able to fix it in that time. Luckily, 20 minutes later, knock on the door, all fixed, all sorted. I was like, wow, I wasn't expecting that. After seeing all these other ones that have been like bubbling for months.

have it fixed so quickly was like, ⁓ great. Turns out it was just a crack in the water gauge or the meter. So we had then a new meter put in and it was all sorted. I think the weather had affected lots of them, but it was just the coincidence of that happening after I was spotting all these things and after writing a whole email about the situation to have it then burst outside. was like, ⁓ this is a good test to see how I deal with this situation.

So after having it all sorted, that made me then reflect on the whole situation and how we can relate that to our health. So it's like, what has water got to do with our health other than the fact that you should be drinking it to keep ourselves hydrated and we don't want to be wasting it. If we just think about things that might be happening, particularly in perimenopause, and they might just start to seep through. So think of a water main that's

just starting to like drip through and starting to come up through people just starting to notice but they ignore it. So these symptoms of perimenopause you just start to notice some of these symptoms maybe it's some joint pain maybe it's sleep that's starting to become difficult or maybe you're starting to get a few hot flushes there's so many symptoms of perimenopause so check out the

free masterclass if you haven't already because it will go through all of the different symptoms. But if we ignore them, then they get bigger. We might get more and more symptoms. And while we might be able to ignore one or two of those symptoms or if they're mild, if we ignore them and we get more symptoms or the problem becomes worse, then they become more difficult to ignore. But we get to that point

where we get so many symptoms, we're feeling so rubbish, it's really difficult to a get the motivation to actually make any changes to improve. And then B, once things become more set in and chronic, particularly things like pain, they are much more difficult to treat and to improve. And then you have to invest more time or more money in order

to get those things better. As a physio, I've seen hundreds, thousands probably, many thousands of people that have been in pain. And those that come to have treatment say it's for a sprained ankle. If they came within say five days to a week or so, it's still an acute problem. So it's much easier to treat and improve. So maybe within four, six weeks, you pretty much resolve the problem.

people that have had ongoing issues, say they sprained their ankle six months ago and they're still getting pain when they're walking or doing certain activities, it's now become a chronic problem. And then it takes so much longer and so much more effort to actually improve it. So we may think actually we'll just put up with it because it's so difficult to get a GP appointment or I don't have the money to pay out or

haven't got time to cut off of work or whatever. However, if you think if you leave it and things get worse, then you may not be able to work. If you then decide that you're going to get some treatment, you might need more treatment so it will cost you more money, or you're still going to have to wait for another GP appointment because it becomes a chronic problem. They will leave you waiting longer because they know that it's not going to resolve quickly. If it's an acute problem,

When we triage people in physio, if it's an acute problem less than six weeks, then you'll be seen as an urgent. Three months, I think, is the cutoff for chronic, and then more than three months, then you'll be seen on the routine wait list. So between six weeks and 12 weeks, depending on what it is, will be semi-urgent, is it well? So they might get you in fairly quickly.

So whole point of the story is to think about addressing any symptoms or issues quickly and not put them off. Don't waste more time and energy and money by delaying getting help or maybe it's you can find ways and means to help yourself. It is just taking a couple of small steps.

forward to improve those things. Now it might be as simple if you start to have problem with your sleep. Look at what you're eating and drinking. Maybe you're having too much caffeine before bedtime. These things we could get away with when we're in our 20s, 30s potentially. Once we hit our 40s towards our 50s, these habits and things that we've done often will

worsen symptoms. So it might be if you were tired or you might be if you were struggling to sleep, you would just have coffee in the morning. Actually, caffeine can make symptoms worse. So it's finding the right way to help yourself, the right information to support you. But don't let burst water main go on too long. Try and get it sorted. And

if you're getting loads of symptoms of perimenopause, it's nipping it in the bud because it might be things, habits that you've done that are making things worse. It might be stress that you are no longer as resilient as you were if you continue with that stressful job or ways or if that stress level stays up there and you don't do anything about it.

then things will just get worse and worse. You will start to get physical effects as well as the menopause symptoms becoming worse. So you don't need to fix every single thing at once. It's just looking at one thing, one thing that you could do to help improve things. So for me, it was ringing that emergency number to try and get somebody to come and fix it. If that hadn't fixed it, then I would have had to

of waited until somebody could come and dig up our nice driveway. But one thing forward, maybe it is watching the pre-masterclass that I've got that will help you. Maybe it's going to the GP to ask for some medication or just to look at all of your symptoms. Maybe it's coming to see me to have a menopause MOT. But there's all sorts of things that you can do one step forward to start improving the symptoms.

Don't leave it for too long. Hopefully today's episode has got you thinking about leaving things, what you can do, and you don't have to put up with

You deserve to be your best self and you deserve to have the best wellbeing that you can. You don't have to put up with feeling unwell because you've got other priorities. You should be your biggest priority. Like they say on the aircraft, sort your own oxygen mask out first before you help other people. So make sure that you take one step this week to help yourself.

Until next time, take care.