Do You Suffer From Stress Incontinence?

Stress incontinence is definitely embarrassing. You tend to isolate yourself, limit your work, as well as your social life. You would overcome and eventually manage stress incontinence towards improving your overall well-being with the proper treatment.

Stress incontinence is a urinary incontinence set off by physical movements or activities like coughing, sneezing, or just lifting a heavy thing or equipment. It is said that stress incontinence is not related to psychological stress and is more common in women than in men.

Experience of urine leakage when you cough, sneeze, laugh, stand up, lift something heavy, or exercise are symptoms of stress incontinence. Although you may not encounter incontinence each time you do any of these but any pressure-increasing activity can make you susceptible to unintentional urine loss, especially when your bladder is full.

Here are several causes of stress incontinence. it normally occurs due to poor function of the muscles that support the bladder or control the release of urine. As the bladder expands to fill itself with urine, the valve-like muscles at the end of the urethra is normally closed or contracted to avoid urine release until you get to the bathroom. Pressure can trigger urine release before you are ready due to some problems with the urinary sphincter.

The urinary sphincter and pelvic floor muscles obtain problems due to childbirth that had led to tissue or nerve damage during delivery of the child. As well as by prostate surgery like surgical removal of the prostate gland.

Several contributing factors include urinary tract infection, illnesses that can cause chronic coughing, sneezing, obesity, smoking, diabetes, excessive consumption of caffeine or alcohol, medications leading to increase of urine production, and sports like tennis and running. Added factors that increase the development of stress incontinence are age, type of delivery, and previous pelvic surgery.

There are various treatments proposed for stress incontinence as well. Although your doctor would possibly recommend a combination of treatment strategies to lessen or end the number of incontinence episodes. Your doctor will recommend treatments that will also be addressing certain illness if it would be found as a contributing factor.

Your doctor would recommend treatment procedures like regulation of fluid consumption, modification towards healthy lifestyle, scheduled toilet trips, pelvic muscle exercises, and behavioral therapies.

My name is Dr.Ralph A Highshaw, MD and I provide a full complement of urological services for both males and females of all age groups. Feel free to either get in touch with me or check www.SouthernCaliforniaUrologist.com to learn more about stress incontinence and how you can manage it.