Is Incontinence Ruining Your Life? There’s a Solution
If you or a loved one is dealing with leakage, you know that it can be embarrassing and difficult to talk about. You may be wondering if you’ll be dealing with it for the rest of your life! Having leakage can impact your quality of life in many ways. It may keep you from exercising, playing with your kids, or spending time with friends and family. You may be embarrassed to buy pads or if you have to change clothes frequently. It can even contribute to feelings of depression, isolation, and anxiety. What many people don’t know is that treatment is available! Pelvic health physical therapy can help to decrease or even eliminate urinary leakage.
What Are the Common Causes of Incontinence?
Urinary incontinence is defined as any involuntary loss of bladder control resulting in leakage. It impacts up to 60% of women1 and up to 11% of men2. It may be a result of childbirth, surgery, or injury, but you also may have no idea why it started in the first place.
There are multiple reasons that you might be experiencing incontinence. Weakness in the pelvic floor may be one cause, but if the pelvic floor has too much tension it can also result in incontinence symptoms.
- If you leak when you cough, sneeze, jump, or run, it may be an issue with how your pelvic floor is coordinating with your breathing and the other muscles in your core and hips.
- If you have strong urges, frequent urination, and leakage while you’re trying to hurry to the bathroom, it may be that your bladder needs to be retrained to learn how to hold urine more effectively.
- If you feel like you’re not fully emptying when you pee, then leak afterwards, it may be that your pelvic floor is not fully relaxing when you go to the bathroom.
- If you’ve recently had prostate surgery, you may be experiencing leakage because of the changes to pressure around the bladder and urethra.
Other factors such as constipation, bladder irritants like caffeine and soda, and stress can also contribute to leakage. There are some situations, such as spinal cord or brain injuries, where physical therapy may not be able to completely cure symptoms, but a therapist can still help you learn more about your specific issue and how to best manage it.
Can Pelvic Physical Therapy Cure Urinary Incontinence?
By doing a specialized examination, a trained pelvic therapist can determine what may be causing or contributing to your incontinence. From there, they can create a specialized plan for your specific circumstances to address those issues. They may ask about your personal patterns of bathroom habits, leakage and triggers or have you fill out a bladder diary.
Can Pelvic Physical Therapy Cure Urinary Incontinence?
By doing a specialized examination, a trained pelvic therapist can determine what may be causing or contributing to your incontinence. From there, they can create a specialized plan for your specific circumstances to address those issues. They may ask about your personal patterns of bathroom habits, leakage and triggers or have you fill out a bladder diary.
They will also want to determine how well your pelvic floor is functioning. They will assess things like:
- Are you able to control your pelvic floor?
- Does it contract, relax, and coordinate with coughing and jumping?
- Can you hold a contraction, and is it lengthening fully when you go to the bathroom?
- Are your hip and core muscles strong and coordinated?
These are all things that a pelvic health therapist is trained to evaluate. Research shows that patients may show up to 70% or more improvement in their incontinence symptoms with physical therapy, and it is helpful for all types of incontinence3. Symptoms of leakage can often be helped or even resolved through a combination of pelvic floor training, behavioral modifications, changes to bowel and bladder habits, and core and hip strengthening.
If you have leakage, it’s time to ditch the embarrassment (and the pads) and find a pelvic health physical therapist who can help you get back to living your best life.
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- Patel, Ushma J. MD; Godecker, Amy L. PhD; Giles, Dobie L. MD, MS, MBA; Brown, Heidi W. MD, MAS. Updated prevalence of urinary incontinence in women: 2015–2018 National Population-Based Survey Data. Female Pelvic Medicine & Reconstructive Surgery. 2022;28(4):181-187.
- Nitti VW. The prevalence of urinary incontinence. Rev Urol. 2001;3 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):S2-6.
- Price N, Dawood R, Jackson SR. Pelvic floor exercise for urinary incontinence: A systematic literature review. Maturitas. 2010;67(4):309-315.