How to Cure Incontinence?

19.10.2009 | By: JP

A lot of women suffer from incontinence when they get older. In this article, you can find more information on how to prevent or cure incontinence in a simple way.

Incontinence affects 2 in 3 women aged above 64. (jlp)

What’s incontinence?

Urine leakage or urinary incontinence is the inability to control urination. So, you get small “leaks” of urine and can’t control them even if you want to. This is a major social and hygiene problem for a lot women and men. In general, incontinence affects the older population – 1.5-5 % of men aged below 64, 10-30 % of women aged below 64 and 70 % of women aged above 64 suffer from incontinence. It should be stressed that incontinence isn’t a normal phenomenon associated with aging. In all cases, urine leakage is considered a disease.

What’s the cause of incontinence?

Aging causes certain changes which can influence the development of urinary incontinence. These changes are the reduced elasticity of the bladder wall, weakened bladder muscles because of which the bladder can’t be completely emptied, fewer spontaneous contractions of the bladder and so on. The most important changes that occur in women are caused by low levels of hormones in the body, particularly estrogens in the postmenopausal period. A problem with urine leak also affects younger women. The main cause is weakening of their pelvic floor muscles because of several births or excessive weight. The condition also affects those who have a disease of the muscular or nervous system and those who take drugs with side effects, which have a considerable influence on the functioning of the bladder (anticholinergics, antipsychotics and neuroleptics, diuretics, sedatives, hypnotics and others).

What are the types of incontinence?

The most common type is stress incontinence. It occurs when the pelvic floor muscles are too weak to contract the internal urethral sphincter muscle when pressure on the abdomen increases, for instance, when coughing, sneezing, laughing, walking up the stairs or lifting heavy objects. In that case, you usually pass a small amount of urine. The other type is urge incontinence. It’s thought to occur as a result of incorrect signals sent between the brain and the bladder. So, the bladder muscles start contracting before the bladder is completely full. These contractions can be spontaneous or triggered by increased pressure on the abdomen. We should also mention another type called overflow incontinence. This means that it’s difficult to start to pass urine because your bladder muscles are unable to squeeze the bladder empty. This type of incontinence occurs only in rare cases.

Incontinence can be prevented by doing Kegel exercises and living a healthy life style. (jlp)

How can you cure incontinence?

Treatment for incontinence depends of the type of incontinence. There are three methods available.

Behavioral therapy plays an important role and 60 % of women are cured by this therapy. The therapy consists of easy exercises for strengthening the pelvic floor muscles, also known as Kegel exercises. In the exercises, a woman inserts a Kegel exerciser (barbell, spring or rubber bulb) in her vagina and tries to hold it inside. There are a number of other aids available to do exercises for strengthening your pelvic floor muscles. A similar effect can also be achieved by electro-stimulation with vaginal and rectal exercisers. A slightly more advanced method used in outpatient clinics is called biofeedback where a woman can monitor if she contracts individual muscles in the right way while doing the above-described exercises.

The purpose of treatment with drugs is to block certain receptors that cause contractions of the bladder or stimulate the receptors that affect the elasticity of the bladder and help contract the internal urethral sphincter muscle. The use of hormone replacement therapy during the postmenopausal period in treating incontinence hasn’t been proved successful, so it’s used only in rare cases.

If all the options prove to be unsuccessful, surgery may be recommended. There are different surgical procedures that cure incontinence. In sling procedure, for instance, a strip of tape is inserted into your bladder, underneath your urethra, to support it and stop urine from leaking out. In the surgical procedure called colposuspension, your bladder neck is lifted by making a cut in your lower abdomen and putting stitches through the walls of the bladder neck.