Urinary incontinence is common, especially in women. Hormonal influences, weakened or damaged muscles from childbirth can be the cause. There are different types of urinary incontinence. 2 types of urinaryincontinence are stress urinary incontinence and urge urinary incontinence. The most common cases of urinary incontinence take place when there’s additional pressure on the abdomen. We call this abdominal pressure. Think of sporting, coughing and laughing, or the amount of pressure on your bladder when you desperately need to pee. Both men and women can experience different types of incontinence. Men have an increased chance of developing incontinence after a prostrate surgery, while women develop urinary incontinence with age or after childbirth.
Take a look at the pelvic floor exercises or at all the pelvic supplies on the Pelvic Store.
Let’s grab some examples. I’ve found a lot of information, but that wasn’t quite telling, in my opinion. Through story telling I will give you a few examples of urinary incontinence. Hopefully this will give you a good image or you can find points of recognition.
Example 1: Greta’s story.
Greta wants to actively play a game of ping pong with the girls again. Have a nice time hitting a ball. Her little one just turned one, so smacking a ball back and forth should be doable again. However, Greta still has a bad feeling about this fun activity. When she visited Sally last for a cup of coffee, she had to laugh that hard that some urine slipped out.
Greta is experiencing stress urinary incontinence or exertional incontinence. In Volendam, a city in the Netherlands, they commonly call urinary incontinence a local “tear in the dam”. Stress urinary incontinence doesn’t mean that Greta herself is experiencing stress. It means that there’s an increased pressure in the pelvic floor. This type of incontinence is caused by increasing pressure. An increased abdominal pressure, so to speak. A nice laughing fit can end in something different. But this also can be applied to coughing, wheezing, lifting and sports – they can all cause a wet pants.
More often than not, it are small bits of urine and not a whole puddle.
What causes loss of urine with stress urinary incontinence?
This mainly has to do with the weak muscles. The pelvic floor muscles consciously and subconsciously keep your urethra closed. You often don’t even notice this. The pelvic floor muscles are strong enough to catch the increasing abdominal pressure, but what if they aren’t? You probably guessed it; The abdominal pressure becomes too much for the pelvic floor muscles. The pelvic floor muscles are unable to keep the urethra closed and lose control over the urethra, which can cause urine to escape. That’s how increasing abdominal pressure causes urinary loss.
What causes loss of urine and what causes stress urinary incontinence?
Often something happens that causes stress urinary incontinence, for example a surgery or an event surrounding the pelvic area which caused the pelvic floor muscles to be affected, like a pregnancy. This type of urinary incontinence doesn’t necessarily have to develop directly after childbirth. Vaginal childbirth can still have consequences years later. Women of age that gave birth in the past are a big group of people that potentially can develop stress urinal incontinence. This can be caused by weakening muscles because of aging.
What can you do to help stress urinary incontinence?
A lot! Stress urinary incontinence can be treated just fine. You can strengthen your weakened pelvic floor muscles. You can do this with the right pelvic floor exercises. These are exercises that you can apply anywhere, without anyone noticing! I’ve collected some pelvic floor exercises for you.
Where can you seek help for urinary loss or stress urinary incontinence?
When you have this type of urinary incontinence, you can get to work with pelvic floor exercises. You can also look for a suitable pelvic practitioner or pelvic physical therapist. These are specialized pelvic therapists who can help you immediately.
Example 2: Holly.
Holly has arranged a fun afternoon. She decided to meet up with a friend to go to the city. This is Holly’s city where she feels comfortable, because she knows where the toilets are. Holly also didn’t drink the entire morning so that she doesn’t have to go to the toilet once she’s in the city. Knowing the locations and not drinking helps Holly to reach the toilet when necessary. Luckily, her friend knows about her urinary issues.
Holly probably makes it through this day just time, but she gets sweaty hands when she’s thinking about tomorrow. Holly is going out with her mother-in-law tomorrow, a nice walk in the forest and ending with a tasty lunch. To Holly, that sounds like hell. And it isn’t because of her mother-in-law.
Holly also suffers from urinary incontinence, but another type than what Greta does. Holly is experiencing urge urinary loss, also known as urge urinary incontinence. In Amsterdam, we call this “a piss emergency”. It often means that, because of the sudden urge, you’re too late with going to the toilet and holding it up isn’t an option anymore.
We aren’t talking about a few drops here, but about the entire contents of the bladder. And going to the toilet at night isn’t an uncommon trip for people like Holly.
What causes urinary loss when you have urge urinary incontinence?
Urge urinary incontinence is a type of incontinence where the bladder has an evident disorder. The muscles surrounding the bladder are overactive and tense up way more frequently than normal. Sometimes you don’t have to pee yet, or the bladder isn’t even full, but still the muscles will already tense up which will give you the feeling like you’re about to burst. And you are about to burst, because holding up your urine is basically impossible. It often points to weakened pelvic floor muscles that are unable to provide resistance for the bladder muscles.
What causes this urge urinary incontinence?
You often see weakened pelvic floor muscles when you have urge urinary incontinence. It’s almost impossible for the pelvic floor muscles to fight against the muscles surrounding the bladder. They lose this battle once you feel the urge increase out of nowhere.
What can you do to help urge urinary incontinence?
The best remedy for urge incontinence is performing pelvic floor exercises to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles. These muscles close off the urethra, but they do need to be in good shape for that. I have gathered some pelvic floor exercises for you. You can do them to get your pelvis back in the ultimate shape. Next to that it’s also important that you get more insight about your urinating habits. How do you urinate, and do you properly empty your bladder? Keep a urine diary and read my tips about toilet habits. You will get a better idea of how frequently you pee. This is useful information for when you visit a pelvic physical therapist.
Where can you seek help for urge urinary incontinence?
You can already get to work yourself when you have this type of incontinence. You can also look for a suitable pelvic practitioner or a pelvic physical therapist. These are specialist pelvic therapists who can help you immediately.
More types of urinal loss or urinary incontinence.
Unfortunately, these aren’t the only types of incontinence. There are 4 more. It can even be the case that you have different types of urinary incontinence at the same time. We call this mixed urinary incontinence, which means you have exertional and urge urinary incontinence. A Holly-Greta combination, so to speak.
This is overflow incontinence.
It’s also possible that you have a type of incontinence when your bladder is too full, we call this overflow incontinence. This is a type of incontinence where your bladder is too full and will overflow. This is often caused by a disrupted signal of the nerves or a blockage in the urethra. The blockage can cause only droplets to come out instead of a steam, with prevents you to empty the bladder properly. The bladder remains too full and will overflow once urine keeps being added.
Not being able to empty the bladder properly can lead to having a bladder infection. This is possible with both men and women. It can be caused by an overactive pelvic floor muscle as well, which prevents you to relax once you’re seated on the toilet. With men, the cause can also be an enlarged prostate. With women, it can be a prolapse of the pelvic organs.
And lastly, are you looking for more information?
Hopefully this information was useful to you! If you’re still looking for some more information, feel free to take another look around on the website. It’s filled with in-depth information, tips, a web shop and also exercises. I still have a lot of articles with lots of information about other symptoms and issues. Feel free to click on the blue words to take you straight to the right page.
