Coping with urinary incontinence

Taking back control of your life

Urinary incontinence is a common and sometimes embarrassing condition. So, we have put together some strategies that should improve your symptoms and help you cope with the day-to-day challenges of urinary incontinence.

More on urinary incontinence

Urinary incontinence affects millions of men and women of all ages. It is estimated to occur in around 2–3 percent of teenagers. Teenagers with incontinence are at an increased risk of underachieving in high school.

Almost 25 percent of women experience urinary stress incontinence for at least 1 year following childbirth.

Urinary incontinence, or the loss of bladder control that results in urine leakage, is a widespread problem. But some steps can be taken to reduce your symptoms.

Kenya Laparoscopic Surgery Services detail the best strategies to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles and retrain your bladder, as well as lifestyle changes that you can make to ensure your symptoms of urinary incontinence are a thing of the past.

1. Perform Pelvic Floor Exercises

Your pelvic floor is a sheet of muscles that supports your bladder and bowel. If it weakens, you may experience urine leakage when coughing, laughing, or sneezing, a need to go to the bathroom frequently, or an urgency to get to the bathroom and leaking on the way.

Pelvic floor exercises, which are sometimes known as Kegel exercises, aim to strengthen your muscles to support your organs, improve bladder control, and prevent urine leakage.

After menopause, physical therapy involving pelvic floor muscle exercises has also been found to dramatically reduced urine leaks by 75 percent in women with urinary incontinence and osteoporosis.

How to do pelvic floor exercises

First, you need to locate your pelvic floor muscles, which you can do by trying to stop your flow of urine mid-stream. Exercises should be performed at first by sitting on a chair with your feet flat on the floor, and your elbows rested on your knees.

Two types of exercises called slow contraction and fast contraction should be performed to give your pelvic floor a full workout. Always do the slow contraction exercises first and then the fast contraction exercises.

To practice slow contraction exercises

1. Draw up your muscles surrounding your anus as if you are trying to stop yourself from passing gas. However, do not squeeze your buttock muscles.
2. Also, draw up the muscles around your urethra as if you are trying to stop urine flow.
3. Hold this position for as long as you can. You may only be able to hold this contraction for a couple of seconds at first, but the goal is to hold for a count of 10 seconds.
4. Slowly relax and let go for 10 seconds.
5. Gradually increase the time you hold the contraction and repeat until your muscles begin to feel tired.

To practice fast contraction exercises

• Draw up the muscles surrounding your anus and urethra as before.
• Hold the contraction for 1 second and then let go and relax.
• Repeat the contractions up to 10 times or until your muscles tire.

Try to come up with an exercise plan that includes 10 slow contractions and three sets of 10 fast contractions twice per day.

Make sure that you breathe normally while exercising and are focusing on the correct muscles. You should begin to see results within 3–6 months.

2. Retrain your bladder

Bladder training is a behavioral therapy that aims to increase the time between urinating.

Muscles control the bladder, which means that the muscles can be strengthened a similar way to working out your biceps and quadriceps.

Individuals with urinary incontinence normally develop a habit of going to the bathroom too often to ensure that they are not caught out.

However, this sort of behavior exacerbates the problem by causing the bladder to get used to holding less urine and making it more sensitive and overactive.

Bladder training can help to reduce urinary incontinence by helping the bladder to hold more urine and prevent it from being overactive.

It can be useful to keep a diary of information linked to your condition before you start training so that you have a starting point from which you can measure progress.

In your bladder diary, record the times that you urinate, whether or not you could completely empty your bladder, the duration between trips to the bathroom, and any other relevant information.

Schedule bathroom visits. The goal of bladder training is to decrease the times that you urinate each day to around six to eight times.

Look at when you recorded going to the bathroom in your bladder diary and gradually extend the duration between bathroom visits. For example, if you go to the bathroom once per hour, aim to extend that to 1 hour and 15 minutes and increase that time gradually over the few next weeks.

Delay urination. If you feel the urge to go to the bathroom, try to delay your trip by around 5 minutes. Slowly continue to delay urinating until you can get to around 3–4 hours between bathroom visits.

The following tips may help you to increase your success with bladder training:

• Do not rush to the bathroom when you feel the urge to urinate. Sit still and try to hold on as long as possible.
• Avoid unhealthful habits of going to the bathroom “just in case.”
• Distract your attention by thinking about something else.
• Try delaying tactics such as clenching your fists or crossing your legs.
• Practice pelvic floor exercises to strengthen your power to hold urine.
• Continue to drink plenty of water each day to ensure you do not develop a urinary tract infection.
• Limit drinks that increase urination, such as coffee, tea, and other caffeinated beverages.

Your physician will advise a program that is right for you, but most bladder training includes similar techniques.

3. Maintain a healthy BMI

Being overweight or obese is associated with a higher risk of developing urinary incontinence.

Furthermore, women who took action to lose at least 5 percent of their BMI had a lower chance of experiencing new or persistent stress urinary incontinence over 3 years than those who lost less weight.

Aiming to reduce your BMI if you are overweight or obese could help you to get your urinary incontinence under control.

You can decrease your BMI by following healthful lifestyle choices, such as:

• Brisk walking for 30 minutes on 5 days of the week.
• Reducing the number of calories you consume for how active you are.
• Consuming a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.
• Filling half of your plate with vegetables at mealtimes.
• Replacing refined grains with whole grains.
• Increasing fiber intake.
• Avoiding sugary snacks.
• Cutting down on saturated fats.
• Ditching processed foods.

4. Limit alcohol and caffeine