June 29, 2025

by Andrea Muraskin

Summer should be a time to enjoy life's simple pleasures – like a peaceful walk in the woods, satisfying sex, and a good night’s sleep. This week we're looking at factors that complicate these pleasures, and what we can do to mitigate them.

If sex is painful, you could be experiencing tension in your pelvic floor, a group of muscles at the bottom of the pelvis. We have advice from a physical therapist on how to help relax down there.

Disease-carrying ticks can be a bummer, but we've done the research on how to protect yourself while enjoying the outdoors.

And a new globe-spanning study shows rising temperatures are making nights rougher for people with sleep apnea.

'Say no to power peeing' and other tips from a pelvic floor physical therapist

"Just say no to power peeing," says pelvic floor physical therapist Sara Reardon. "You want to sit, relax and let it flow." Tense pelvic floor muscles can cause constipation.

Antonio Hugo Photo/Getty Images

The pelvic floor is a basket of muscles at the bottom of the pelvis. These muscles play an essential role in functions including urination and defecation, orgasm and childbirth; as well as supporting the reproductive organs and spine.

If you have pain with sex, urine leakage or organ prolapse, that can mean you’re experiencing pelvic floor dysfunction. One in three women will in her lifetime, says Sara Reardon, a physical therapist who specializes in pelvic floor health. The good news is there are things you can do – and behaviors to avoid – that can improve the health of the pelvic floor muscles.

Reardon is the author of the new book Floored: A Woman's Guide to Pelvic Floor Health at Every Age and Stage. She talked to NR’s Life Kit about what people with vaginas should know about their pelvic floor and what to do if you have pelvic floor pain. Here are some of her tips.

Relax and let it flow.
Your pee, that is. Bearing down, pushing out urine or hovering over a toilet seat can cause the pelvic floor muscles to tense and or weaken over time. “Relaxing your pelvic floor allows your bladder, which is a muscle, to push the urine out, and that's really how you're supposed to pee,” Reardon says.

For pelvic floor tension, watch your posture and how you move .
During the pandemic, pelvic floor specialists have reported an uptick in disorders resulting from tight pelvic muscles. Some dubbed the phenomenon “pandemic pelvis” because the most common cause appeared to be stress and too much sitting.

If you spend a lot of time sitting, try this:

Sit with feet flat or crossed at the ankles.
Unclench your butt.
Take big, deep breaths throughout the day.
Try stretches like deep squats, child’s pose or happy baby pose.

To strengthen the pelvic floor, perform Kegels at strategic times.
Reardon recommends doing quick Kegel contractions and longer-hold five- or 10-second Kegel contractions in different positions and during exercises like lunges and squats. If you tend to leak urine when you cough or sneeze, do a Kegel when you feel one coming on. “I always say, ‘Kegel before you cough,’ or ‘Squeeze before you sneeze,’ ” says Reardon.

Learn more about pelvic floor health including when to see a doctor or physical therapist.

Also: Real orgasms and transcendent pleasure: How women are reigniting desire

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Tick risks vary by region. Here's where diseases have spread and how to stay safe

Ticks can carry more than a dozen different disease-causing agents, including toxins, allergens, bacteria, parasites and viruses.

Patrick Pleul/dpa/picture alliance/Getty Images

As I’m writing this it’s a beautiful day outside. 73 degrees and sunny, with low humidity. It’s giving carefree, it’s giving Sesame Street.

On days like this I just want to go roam around in the woods. But I’m not all that carefree about it infact. I’m wearing long pants, high socks, and smelling like chemicals. Because ticks are out there too, and they carry diseases.

Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease in the U.S., estimated to affect more than 470,000 people each year. "But ticks can actually expose people in the U.S. to more than a dozen different disease-causing agents," including toxins, allergens, bacteria, parasites and viruses, says Alison Hinckley, an epidemiologist at the CDC's Division of Vector-Borne Diseases. NPR’s Pien Huang reports on the lay of the land when it comes to ticks in the USA, including how to prevent infection and what to look out for depending on where you live.

Here’s a quick geographic review:

North: Tick bites are most common in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest, with nearly 20% of people getting them each year. Lyme disease is king in this region, and it’s carried by deer ticks. Though more rare, anaplasmosis, babesiosis or relapsing fever can also spread via ticks.

South: In the Central and Southeastern parts of the U.S. around 13% of people report getting tick bites. There, ehrlichiosis, spotted fever rickettsioses and the allergic condition alpha-gal syndrome are the top concerns.

West: In Western states (including California), tick bites are considerably less common, but they do happen — around 6% of people report getting them, according to CDC research. Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever are some of the diseases people get there.

Regardless of where you live, these precautions will reduce your risk of infection, according to experts:

✅ Treat outdoor clothing with permethrin, a chemical similar to chrysanthemum extracts that stops ticks from biting. Additionally, treat your exposed skin with EPA-registered insect repellents containing DEET, picaridin, or other active ingredients that deter ticks.

✅ If you're hiking, it helps to stay in the middle of a well-maintained trail, since ticks tend to hang out in the shrubs and foliage around the edge.

✅ Do careful and frequent tick checks on yourself and your family members and pets.

✅ If you find a tick on you, take it off as soon as you can. In many cases, they feed for a while — from several hours to several days — before they get you sick.

Here’s more advice for what to do if you get bitten, and what’s changing about tick-borne diseases in the United States.

Plus: Is mosquito season getting worse?

Embedded Podcast - The Network series out now

Meet the women shaping the future of abortion

In the last few years, abortion restrictions in the U.S. have grown. In response, women are finding ways to end their pregnancies without a clinic.

On The Network, a new three-part series from NPR’s Embedded podcast and Futuro Media, witness how a network of activists and midwives, grandmothers and friends changed abortion access as we know it.

Hear the series ➔

Climate change is boosting the risk of sleep apnea

Heat makes it harder to sleep. In Baghdad, some neighbors set up mattresses on their roof to find a cool sleeping spot. A new study finds the risk of sleep apnea goes up along with temperatures.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Sleep apnea is a sleep disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts. As climate change pushes up temperatures day and night around the globe, a new study shows that warmer nights are making symptoms worse for people with this disorder thought to affect about a billion people worldwide, as NPR’s Alejandra Borunda reports.

The study found that the chance of having any kind of sleep apnea problem goes up by almost 50% when it's 80 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer, compared to when temps are in the 50s. The likelihood of severe sleep apnea – when people stop breathing more than 30 times in a single hour — goes up dramatically too, says Bastien Lechat, a sleep expert at Flinders University in Australia who authored the study.

The study used about two years of sleep data from more than 125,000 people, in 41 different countries. Sensors placed under people's mattresses tracked changes in sleep apnea incidents over time. Researchers compared that data with the temperature where people lived, and found that as temperatures climbed, people's sleep apnea got worse.

While turning on air conditioning helps, Lechat says he worries for people who don't have access to cooling systems.

Learn more about how climate change is impacting sleep.

Plus: Long- and short-term solutions to keep yourself and your home cool in a heat wave

Before you go:

Alton Fry is trying to pay for prostate cancer treatment without health insurance. He's one of millions of Americans who lack coverage. The number of uninsured could swell as the Trump administration and Congress try to enact policies to roll back access to insurance.

Lynsey Weatherspoon for KFF Health News

U.S. uninsured rates could resurge if Trump's budget bill passes

Listen: Autism rates have exploded. Could the definition be partly to blame?

TikTok bans #SkinnyTok. But content promoting unhealthy eating persists

From the pandemic to porn, here's how norms around sex are shifting for Gen Z

We hope you enjoyed these stories. Find more of NPR's health journalism online.

All the best,
Andrea Muraskin and your NPR Health editors

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