Incontinence is amazingly common – especially if you’ve had a baby – yet most of us don’t talk about it. Although an astonishing 40,000 Kiwi women accidentally wet themselves every day, we tend to think it’s just something we have to put up with. In fact, it can often be fixed – with a DIY solution that doesn’t involve drugs or surgery.
The two most common types of incontinence suffered by women are stress and urge incontinence.
STRESS INCoNTINENCE
This is when activities like coughing, laughing, lifting or exercising cause you to leak urine. It’s a result of your pelvic floor – the hammock-like muscle that holds your bladder, bowel and uterus in place – losing strength and tone. This can be due to a variety of factors including:
Pregnancy
Childbirth
oenopause
Constant coughing
Being overweight
Ageing
General lack of fitness
What you can do about it Leaking is not likely to go away by itself, but you can help your pelvic floor muscles to regain their strength by exercising them. The exercises are easy to learn and can be done anywhere, anytime.
PELVIC FLooR EXERCISES
Sit up with your back supported. Squeeze your vaginal muscles together and lift them, as if you’re trying not to pass wind or stopping a stream of urine.
Feel your pelvic floor lift. If your muscles are weak, you may not feel much at first.
Hold the squeeze then let go, making sure you don’t push downwards. Practice until you can hold a squeeze up to the count of six. Continence nurse Andrea Lord says you should make the exercises part of your daily routine. “Do them while you’re on the phone or waiting for the kettle to boil.” But don’t expect overnight results,
Andrea warns. “It takes about three months to notice any difference.” once you get the hang of the exercises, you can squeeze and hold your muscles to stop wetting yourself. Squeeze and hold as soon as you start to do something that normally causes urine leakage. This braces your pelvic floor and, if you can hold the muscles while you cough or sneeze, you won’t wet yourself. Continence experts refer to this as “having the knack”.
How often is too often?
If you’re under 60 years old, you should be going to the loo between four and seven times a day – that’s around every three, four or five hours. At night, it’s normal to go once or not at all. If you’re older or pregnant, then you will need to urinate a bit more frequently. oost women, however, shouldn’t be going to the loo every couple of hours or getting up more than once in the night.
URGE INCoNTINENCE
This is when you have a sudden urge to dash to the loo. If you don’t get there in time, you end up wetting yourself. This can be due to many reasons, including:
Emotional stress
Temperature (you want to go more when it’s cold)
Infection
Certain medications
How much you drink (both too little and too much is bad for you) and drinking certain fluids (alcohol and caffeine based drinks can irritate the bladder)
Constipation
Habits (going to the toilet too often)
What you can do about it: Visit your GP or a continence specialist to find the cause of your problems. If there’s no obvious reason, such as medication or infection, your incontinence may be due to bad habits and the good news is you can retrain your bladder.
“our mums always used to tell us not to hang on or to ‘go and have a wee just in case’,” but, says Andrea, “going ‘just in case’ gets your bladder into bad habits.” And contrary to what we were always told, “hanging on” when our bladder is getting full is actually the best way of getting it to work properly again.
Andrea teaches patients to resist the urge to go to the loo when they first feel it by distracting themselves.
“Relax your breathing and think of five foods beginning with A, then five foods beginning with B. By the time you get to Z, you deserve to go at last!” Another trick is to sit on a hard surface. This is a way of using pressure to stop urine leaking, but it’s a bit more dignified than the “Michael Jackson crotch-grab” kids use when they’re desperate to go.
The more you teach your bladder to hold on, the better it will get at doing it.
“An overactive bladder is like a child who has been spoilt, being able to empty all the time even when it doesn’t need to, and now it has become a bit of a brat. By giving it tough love and not giving in to its demands, you’re not giving it attention. If there’s no audience, it won’t play up.”
Way of the Geisha
The sex toys known as Ben Wa or geisha balls, which were originally designed centuries ago to improve sexual sensation, can strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. This is because the muscles you use to keep the weighted balls in place in the vagina are the same muscles you are working in pelvic floor exercises. Andrea says that while some women find geisha balls are very helpful, others report little success. “They don’t do any harm, but pelvic floor exercises are cheaper and easier.”
Did you know?
Around two-thirds of women who have bladder control problems can become dry or notice great improvement with a bit of help