Guest post written by Gaynor Morgan. http://incostress.com/
This site is dedicated for women who suffer from stress incontinence.
The urethra is the tube, which passes urine from the bladder out. It normally maintains a tight seal thanks to the sphincter muscle surrounding the urethra, to prevent involuntary loss of urine. For women with stress urinary incontinence, a weakened pelvic muscle floor or a defect in the urethra is unable to support the urethra in its correct position.
If coughing, laughing, sneezing or other movements, which place pressure onto the bladder cause you to leak urine, you may have stress incontinence. The problem is especially noticeable when you let your bladder get too full. Physical changes resulting from pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause can often cause stress incontinence. It is the most common form of incontinence in women and is treatable.
Pelvic floor muscles support your bladder. If these muscles weaken, your bladder can move downward, pushing slightly out of the bottom of the pelvis toward the vagina. This prevents muscles that ordinarily force the urethra shut from squeezing as tightly as they should. As a result, urine can leak into the urethra during moments of physical stress. Stress incontinence also occurs if the muscles that do the squeezing weaken.
Stress incontinence can worsen during the week before your menstrual period. At that time, lowered oestrogen levels might lead to lower muscular pressure around the urethra, increasing chances of leakage. The incidence of stress incontinence increases following menopause.
Advice
Due to the embarrassment of this condition many women either hide the condition by using pads or self diagnose and may end up using products which are not suitable for their condition.
Using pads and sitting in your own urine is not the solution, it may catch the drips for a few hours but the condition eventually deteriorates, leaving the woman desperate which usually leads to surgery.
Using the wrong method of pelvic floor strengthening can also lead to complications. I have seen many women who haven’t been taught the correct way to do kegel exercises, some exercise the glutes (gluteus maximus muscle) and think this is a kegel movement! WRONG!
Some breath in, hold the abdominals in and push in and out, not even breathing. WRONG!
Kegel exercises are meant to be gentle and you must be able to breathe during this exercise. An excellent book, easy to follow and one which teaches you how to breathe and how to control those muscles is ‘Hold It Sister by lead physiotherapist Mary O’Dwyer.
Above all the best advice you can have regarding treatment for stress incontinence is to see a women’s health physiotherapist. She will train you and monitor your conditions. Women’s health physiotherapists are trained to know how to teach and will know what is the best course of treatment to suit you.
If your doctor tells you ‘just do your pelvic floor exercises’ and you don’t know how then please ask him or ask him to refer you to someone who can train you.
Pelvic floor exercises or kegel exercises are not easy to do if you don’t know how to do them, and nobody can expect a woman to automatically know.
For more help C&G Medicare Ltd can advise the closet clinic in your area.
C&G Medicare Ltd offer a free service through their non-profit organization APOPS (Association for Pelvic Organ Prolapse Support) to help women with pelvic floor issues.
www.candgmedicare.com
Topic Next Thursday: Over Active Bladder (OAB).
By Gaynor Morgan © Copyright 2012 for Gloveman Supplies Ltd.
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