Urinary Incontinence
I always assumed that urinary incontinence was a complete emptying of urine without you being aware of it at all, just a little leaking was no big deal – a part of life! But I was wrong, urinary incontinence is defined as any unwanted loss of urine. So even though “leaking” is considered common that doesn’t mean you have to live with it and accept it as part of your daily life. So many women, whether it is with age, or postpartum accept that this is a normal part of life and for so many it can be treated!
There are a few different types of urinary incontinence:
Urge Incontinence (UUI): which is when we have a sudden urge to urinate and urine may leak out, often times this is triggered by something like putting your keys into your lock or running water. It is basically the sensation that we have to go now! This can also be linked in with urinary frequency which people will describe as constantly needing to go to the bathroom. The interesting thing with urge and frequency incontinence is that much of these symptoms can be created with bladder retraining. What happens is our bladder is basically like a balloon and as urine fills that balloon it sends a signal to our brain that we need to go to the bathroom, then we can make the conscious decision if this is a good time or not. Now, if we constantly respond to that first signal and we urinate every time we train our bladder to respond at a much lower threshold. The good thing is that our brain and bladder respond very well to retraining.
Stress urinary Incontinence (SUI), is defined as unwanted loss of urine due to increased pressure or exertion, basically our pelvic floor muscles cannot withstand the force produced against them and this allows for urine to leak out.
Leaking can occur with:
Coughing
Sneezing
Jumping
Running
Heavy Lifting
SUI is usually associated with a pelvic floor that is unable to respond to this sudden pressure, this could be from pelvic floor weakness or a lack of coordination of the pelvic floor muscles. Determining the root cause of your symptoms and what your pelvic floor is doing during these activities is a very important part of PT.
Mixed Urinary Incontinence (MUI): Just how it sounds – MUI is a combination of both SUI and UUI.
