Urinary Incontinence Treatment Methods
Incontinence is the term that refers to problems caused by losing bladder control or having urine leaks. Even if you don’t experience severe accidents but only small urine leaks occasionally, it may discourage you from going in public. Many people feel so embarrassed about their incontinence problems, they don’t even visit a doctor for treatment. This can prevent them from finding out about the incontinence treatment they may benefit from.
To help our readers in learning about their options, and reduce urinary accidents, we gathered some information about the common incontinence treatment methods. By using the practices we will mention, you can lower your risk of having incontinence accidents. Or, maybe you can consider the medical incontinence treatments we will list. Let’s see what are your options.
Practical Incontinence Treatment
While there are some medicinal or surgical methods that can be used for incontinence treatment, you can also use some methods that do not involve any medicines or operations. As the most common incontinence problems are caused by weakened bladder muscles, you can try to make your bladder stronger.
One of the first things you can do for incontinence treatment is to schedule your bathroom visits. If you use your bathroom anytime you feel a need, your bladder muscles do not feel the need to get stronger. But if you push your bladder to hold the urine in for certain windows, the muscles can get stronger. For example, you can set yourself intervals to use the bathroom, like once in 2 hours or more. This can make it easier to hold onto your pee for you. Stronger bladder muscles can prevent leaks and accidents.
Another helpful practice to make your bladder muscles stronger is doing kegel exercises. These are exercises that you can do for incontinence treatment. To do kegel exercises, first, you need to feel the muscles that are necessary to hold the urine in. You can find these muscles by trying to stop the flow while you are urinating in the bathroom. After determining the muscles you use at that moment, you will know which muscles you need to exercise. For the kegel exercise, you can squeeze these muscles and hold them for 10 seconds and then relax. You need to do this 10 times in a row to complete a set. You can repeat 4 or 5 sets per day. You will see improvement within a few months and you should continue doing it. When it is possible, you can do this exercise while laying on your back for a better result.
Medicinal Incontinence Treatment
In certain cases, doctors can offer medicinal options for incontinence treatment. These medicines can have different purposes depending on the incontinence type that is being treated.
For some urge incontinence problems, doctors can prescribe medicines that will stop the signals that cause constant urination urge. Similarly, there are medicines that can be used to slow down overactive bladder movements. In both cases, these medicines reduce the urge you have to urinate.
In some cases, doctors can give medicines for other causes that make you experience incontinence. Antibiotics for urinary tract infections or treatments for edema can be considered medicines.
Devices for Incontinence Treatment
For stress incontinence problems, you can also consider using pessary devices. Pessary devices are designed for women who are suffering from urine leaks and accidents. As this type of incontinence is often caused by loose muscles around the bladder neck, some pressure on this area can help the muscles to seal the bladder exit.
To do this, pessary devices can be placed near the cervix and pressed on the bladder neck. There is no surgical operation or injection needed to use these devices. You can just visit a clinic to get a pessary device installed.
Surgical Incontinence Treatment
Some women suffer from incontinence problems because of the structural deformation they experienced after pregnancy, or by age. With the muscle changes around the pelvis area, the bladder can move or the urinary tract can prolapse. In suitable cases, doctors can offer surgical operations to fix these problems permanently.
Depending on the problem and fixes needed, there are various methods for surgical incontinence treatment. Your doctor can offer a sling procedure to hold your bladder, or a retropubic suspension to support the bladder neck.
Injections for Incontinence Treatment
For certain stress incontinence problems, doctors can offer injections for incontinence treatment. Typically these injections are for thickening the bladder neck. As the loose bladder muscles can fail to seal the bladder neck properly, so using injections to bulk up the bladder neck can help those muscles to seal the urine in easier.
With the new developments in technology, the risks of your body rejecting these injections are lowered in recent years. But keep in mind that, since the body’s metabolism usually washes the injected material after a while, these injections may require follow-ups.
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To learn more about urinary incontinence problems and the incontinence treatment method you can take a look at our other articles on this subject. We also have many articles about many common health issues that most women deal with. You can learn more and read tips about those issues, you can visit the category pages. If you want to see our tips on social media, you can follow us there too.
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