Minor Injuries: Seeking Treatment in a Timely Manner

Urinary incontinence occurs when you experience a loss of urine unintentionally as your bladder muscle contracts. Stress incontinence occurs when activities like sneezing, coughing, laughing, or lifting of heavy objects trigger stress on your bladder. These activities also cause your bladder muscle to contract, and you can't stem the flow of urine. Hurrying to get to the bathroom only increases the urgency. Physical therapy exercises help to control your bladder incontinence.

Struggling With Bladder Incontinence?

You don't have to be embarrassed because you have symptoms of urinary incontinence or stress incontinence. Many Americans like you suffer from this condition. Interestingly enough, it is said that 75 to 80 percent of those Americans are women. Physical therapy is now helping many of them to heal from this miserable condition.

Menopause and Estrogen Loss Deteriorates Bladder Lining

Many of the muscles and ligaments that support your uterus also support your bladder. Menopause depletes your production of estrogen hormone. Estrogen hormone keeps the lining of your bladder and urethra healthy until menopause sets in and deteriorates the tissues. Naturally deteriorated tissues can then trigger incontinence. So physical therapy exercises help to mend deteriorated tissues. If you've had a hysterectomy  wherein your uterus has been removed, that too can damage your pelvic floor muscles, which inevitably leads to incontinence.

Retraining Your Bladder

Physical therapy interventions involve bladder retraining and muscle reeducation, and these modalities result in  effective urinary incontinence reduction. Bladder training may not be as difficult as you think it is, and here's why physical therapists recommend the following activity. Try not to rush off immediately and urinate by adding about a 10-minute wait before emptying your bladder. They recommend that you next time add another 10 minutes to delay your bathroom visit. This type of exercise equips you to eventually empty your bladder after a few hours.

Kegel Exercises

You use the same muscles that stop your urinary flow when you perform Kegel exercises. Urology physicians and physical therapists want you to know that Kegels are very useful when used in the early stages of incontinence. Your physical therapist will instruct you how to do these exercises and how often you should do them. Industry news maintain that you could see improvement in 6 to 12 weeks of continued use.

Weight Loss Relieves Pressure

Losing pounds of fat from your belly area reduces pressure that causes incontinence. Belly fat presses on your bladder and pelvic muscles. So do frequent walking exercises to drop excess belly fat, which helps to restore bladder control.