There’s no denying that urinary incontinence is a serious issue amongst countless women, and it’s a medical issue that a lot of women are confused about when it comes to treatment options.
You certainly don’t have to live with urinary incontinence, and we’ve partnered up with the specialists at Balanced Body Functional Medicine to develop this list of common treatments that women should keep in mind if they just so happen to be experiencing incontinent symptoms.
So here are some of the common treatments that women should keep in mind when they’re experiencing incontinence symptoms:
Behavioral Changes
Sometimes the best way to recover from urinary incontinence is to change your behavior as best as you can, which is a possible effective treatment for the two most common types of urinary incontinence. These types of incontinence include stress incontinence and urge incontinence.
Some behavioral changes you can keep in mind include the following:
- Bladder training: This is the effort to try your best to control the timing and frequency of when you use the bathroom. What you’ll need to do is keep a diary about your bathroom habits that includes information about your drinking and eating behavior. This diary will help your doctor be more informed about your progress and help you throughout the treatment process.
- Pelvic exercises: Simply strengthening your pelvic floor on a daily basis via all sorts of different stretches and exercises can go a long way to control your urine flow.
- Stop smoking: A lot of people don’t realize this, but smoking leads to coughing that then makes it harder to hold urine inside. Smoking of course is a bad habit to have in general, but it does make urinary incontinence worse.
- Urgency suppression: This refers to controlling all sorts of feelings oriented around the need to go to the bathroom, so this is a form of bladder training. Some tactics include deep breathing, distracting yourself and pelvic exercises.
Medical Devices For Urinary Incontinence
There are a couple different medical devices that can support women who are experiencing urinary incontinence, including the following:
- Urethral insert: This type of insert is similar to a tampon, because it’s a disposable device that creates a barrier to urinary leaks while you’re going through your daily activities.
- Vaginal pessary: This is a ring-like device that can support a woman’s bladder that has dropped. Your doctor will be able to insert and properly fit this device during your appointments, and this device can help someone avoid surgery.
Medications That Support Urinary Incontinence
Some of the common medications that women experiencing urinary incontinence should keep in mind include:
- Estrogen replacement therapy
- Pseudoephedrine
- Urge incontinence medications
- Botox
- And much more…
Surgery
If the above treatment methods don’t do the trick to alleviate an individual’s urinary incontinence, then it’s possible for a doctor to recommend surgery. The following operations are considered to have a very high success rate when it comes to treating women with urinary incontinence:
- Sling procedure: This is the most common type of urinary incontinence surgery, and what happens is that the doctor will develop a “hammock” type of device to support a woman’s urethra. This isn’t a serious type of surgery where the patient would have to go under, and it usually only requires local anesthesia.
- Retropubic colposuspension: If a patient’s bladder has dropped, your doctor may recommend this type of surgery that entails stitches lifting up your tissues around the entrance of your bladder.
Reach Out To The Experts At Balanced Body Functional Medicine To Learn More About Urinary Incontinence Treatment Options!
Urinary incontinence in women is always a very serious medical condition that should be addressed in a multitude of ways, and the above treatment options are just the beginning in terms of everything a patient can do with their medical professionals.
You can learn more about urinary incontinence treatment by speaking directly with the specialists at Balanced Body Functional Medicine via the link at the top of the page!