Urinary Incontinence & its Treatment

Incontinence is of two broad types – fecal and urinary; perhaps, you are more acquainted with the term “urinary incontinence”. That’s the commoner among the two. Urinary incontinence is faced by a large section of the population that includes not only aged individuals but also pregnant women and/or patients with a lower segment injury.

A brief account of fecal and urinary incontinence

Fecal incontinence is a lack of one's control of bowel movements (this one's less prevalent), whereas urinary incontinence is a total or partial loss of bladder control. Let's stress urinary incontinence in the latter part of this write-up today.

Urinary Incontinence

The degree of urinary incontinence depends upon the underlying cause. By degree what I mean is – whether the loss of control is resulting in a slight leakage (while sneezing or laughing suddenly) or the person is left with no time to visit the toilet when he wants to urinate!

One of the most common causes of urinary incontinence is an overactive bladder. There are several reasons for the existence of an overactive bladder (OAB). So, what happens when a person has an OAB? The bladder muscles begin to contract even if it is not full and the person wants to urinate. Here are the possible causes of an overactive bladder…

• A brain or spinal cord injury
• Age; the muscle elasticity wears down with age
• Neurological disorders
• Post-menopausal period for women
• Pregnancy, especially the months involving advanced pregnancy
• Any infection in the urinary tract – a UTI or even a bladder stone

Urinary Incontinence Treatment

Incontinence is not always treatable. Better said, incontinence can at times be well managed by adopting certain lifestyle changes. It all depends upon the underlying cause that is responsible for incontinence. Even, a combination of treatments could help alleviate an individual from incontinence.

Here are some behavioral way-outs…

Self-control your bladder – While there’s a heavy urge to urinate, self-delay the act of going to the bathroom. You could begin this practice by keeping the delay act as short as 10 minutes. Since you are doing it consciously, you could find it a little difficult at first. Try to distract yourself – it helps! Elongate the time gap between your toilet trips; so, you need to keep doing until the gap is at least somewhere around 3 hours.

Try double voiding – It means urinating, and then repeat the effort to urinate after waiting for few minutes in the bathroom. This helps in emptying the bladder more completely so that symptoms of overflow incontinence gradually fade out.

You might have to regulate fluid intake – Cutting back on alcohol, caffeine, and some other acidic foods could in turn help in regaining bladder control. Losing weight (through exercises or diet control) is another technique that might check an overactive bladder.

Exercises…

Pelvic exercises are one of the commonest treatment modalities for incontinence, especially urinary incontinence. They are better known as Kegel exercises. To understand how a Kegel exercise is done, imagine you want to control/stop the flow of your urine. Got the contraction thing? There you go! Contract those muscles for 5 seconds and then relax them for the next five.

Try and increase the duration of contraction and relaxation along with sets of at least 10 repetitions each day.

Bladder issues aren’t rare. Neither are the solutions to urinary incontinence. Pads, feminine panty liners, protective underwear which are also called pull-ups come to the rescue especially when you're suffering from stress incontinence. Learn more on how to Cope with Incontinence and depending on the extent of the problem, surgical interventions might also be resorted to.