Family Physician: A Friend to Depend On

Posted on: 16 March 2021

Urinary incontinence, where urine leaks from your bladder when you are outside of the bathroom, can be frustrating and even embarrassing to deal with. The good news is that there are various treatment options for this condition. Some of those treatment options are based on the idea of behavioral change. With the behavioral change, you focus on changing your regular habits to control your urinary incontinence.

Pelvic Floor Exercises

Your pelvic floor muscle is connected to your bladder control. Your pelvic floor is a muscle, which can gain and lose strength over time. Things such as getting old or having children can cause your pelvic floor to weaken.

If your pelvic floor is weak, working it out can help to strengthen your pelvic floor. Kegels are the exercises that are used to strengthen your pelvic floor. Many women use Kegels to enhance sex; the truth, though, is it helps maintain your pelvic floor, which will help with your urinary incontinence.

Bladder Training

Another behavior change you can make is bladder training. With bladder training, your goal is to control when and how you use the bathroom.

Bladder training starts with keeping a diary of what you drink when you feel a leak and when you go to the bathroom. Your doctor will analyze this diary and use it to help make a bathroom schedule that will change over time, with the ultimate goal of training your bladder to go longer between bathroom visits slowly. 

Urgency Suppressions

Another behavioral technique is urgency suppressions. With urgency suppressions, you are going to work on controlling the urge to go. When you have to go suddenly, you will work to distract your body from needing to go, using a variety of techniques such as breathing exercises and Kegels with the ultimate goal of eliminating the need to randomly and urgently go to the bathroom with such frequency and get rid of leaks.

Stop Smoking

If you are a smoker, stopping smoking can help you control your urinary incontinence. Smoking can lead to you coughing more, which is an action that makes it more difficult to hold your urine and can cause you to leak or need to use the restroom suddenly. Frequent smoking and coughing regularly, not just randomly when you get sick, can irritate your bladder. Going on a smoking cessation program can help you get your urinary incontinence under control and provide other health benefits as well.

With urinary incontinence in women, the first thing you should discuss with your doctor is behavioral changes you can make that will help you control your condition, such as pelvic floor exercises, bladder training, urgency suppression, and quitting smoking. If those behavioral changes don't work, then you can move on to other intervention methods, such as medication, medical devices, and surgery. Contact a company that offers urinary incontinence treatment services for more information.