Ways to Cope Up with Urinary Incontinence in Women

Urinary incontinence refers to a condition when a person has great difficulty holding one’s urine from flowing out. As such, the condition entails an involuntary leakage of urine. Because of this condition, a person feels embarrassment and it has a profound impact on one’s lifestyle as well as on one’s personality.

The good thing about urinary incontinence is that the causes of the condition are often treatable, which provides a ray of hope for those who suffer from it. Being a medical condition, there are many forms of medications that will allow one to cope with the condition, although non-medical approaches are also showing promise.

The following are some of the ways to cope with urinary incontinence:

a) Stress management. There are cases of urinary incontinence that is due to stress. This is especially true for those who are frequently exposed to tension and other unnerving situations. Unwittingly, some reaction to such kind of pressure is urinary incontinence. When this happens, one should learn to devise a means by which stress can be handled properly and tension can be seen from a more positive viewpoint.

b)  Learn to limit the intake of fluids. This is because one form of urinary incontinence is due to overflow incontinence. When this is the case, the patient has the sensation that the bladder is always full. As a result, one will constantly leak urine from a full bladder. The best way to cope with this is to minimize the intake of body fluids.

c)  Reduce weight. Weight reduction is beneficial in handling incontinence because it is directly related to the body mass. A greater body mass is likely to cause urinary incontinence than a lighter body mass.

d)  Regular exercising. Exercising regularly will help the pelvic muscles become stronger so they can easily handle cases of urinary incontinence.

e)  The use of slings. When the pelvic floor muscles of a woman are weak, it can hardly support the urethra. As a result, there is a frequent leakage of urine. In the sling procedure, you fashion a mesh material made from one’s own tissues to support the urethra. The procedure has a high rate of success, although it requires a surgical operation for the insertion of the mesh material.

f)   The use of catheters. Although this procedure is popular, it is commonly used only in the most severe cases. In this procedure, a tube is inserted through the urethra and into the bladder to drain the urine.

g)  Electrical stimulation. This is akin to massaging the pelvic muscles to make it strong and to enable it to fully empty the bladder of all the urine. In this procedure, electrodes are placed in the vaginal area to stimulate the surrounding muscles.

h ) Biofeedback. This procedure is a combination of counseling and electronic monitoring of the patient’s body. In this procedure, a woman is interviewed to determine possible situations that cause urine leakage. In the same token, devices monitor her urine level, enabling researchers to pinpoint those situations where there is the likelihood of urine leakage.

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