Your Good Health Matters

Most of us understand that urinary incontinence is the involuntary leakage of urine. What many people don’t know is that in many cases, the problem can be remedied without expensive drugs and surgery. Surprised? The fact is that incontinence, especially in women is most often caused by a weakening of the pelvic floor muscles. And when muscles are weak, they don’t perform like they used to.

So, how do you know if your incontinence is caused by a weakened pelvic floor? The first step is to create a bladder diary. This consists of recording your food and liquid intake and monitoring the number of times you need to urinate, actually leak urine or the amount of urine passed at each void. When examining the bladder diary, a doctor can see any patterns that might suggest a cause of your incontinence. The cure can be as simple as timing when you use the bathroom to train your bladder. Additional behavioral measures include monitoring your fluid intake, learning not to strain when voiding and using Kegel exercises to increase the strength of your pelvic floor muscles.

Ironically, most women have been told at some point that Kegel exercises help maintain muscle strength and increase sexual pleasure, yet many cannot isolate the proper muscles or perform the contraction correctly. As a result, the contractions don’t really do anything to improve muscle strength.
The first step is isolating the proper muscles. Try imagining that you are sitting on top of a marble. If you wanted to pick up the marble with your vagina what would you do? Visualize sucking the marble up into your vaginal canal. Do not squeeze your buttocks, stomach or thigh muscles. If the wrong muscles are used, it can actually put more pressure on the pelvic floor muscles. Simply tighten the pelvic muscles. Breathe slowly and deeply.

Repeat several times, but be careful you don’t overdo it as this can lead to muscle fatigue.  In the beginning, pick a quiet place to practice where you can lie down. This is helpful in the beginning so you don’t have to fight gravity. Contract your pelvic muscles and hold for a count of three. Release the contraction and rest for another count of three. Do as many as you can and try to increase your Kegels to three sets of 10 repeats. As your strength increases, begin exercising while sitting or standing. In these positions gravity will add resistance which helps you increase your strength.

And remember, you must be patient. You don’t lose 30 pounds in a day. You can’t give up. In only 3-6 weeks you will see results. And you only need to spend 5 minutes a day. For some, the addition of Vaginal Weights or Cones will help to keep your motivation. Whatever you do, just keep at it. Isn’t 6 weeks of patience better than a major abdominal surgery or drugs for the rest of your life?