Urinary Incontinence Is Real & It’s Time We Stop Joking About It
If you spend time in mommy groups on social media, you probably know that a lot of moms pee a little when we sneeze, cough, or run. It’s become such an acceptable part of new motherhood that we actually joke about it. But those jokes are starting to piss me off (pun intended). I mean, as someone who carried and birthed three babies, and now has urinary incontinence, I find it humiliating… not funny. So, can we please stop joking about urinary incontinence? It impacts so many new moms, so I don’t think it’s a laughing matter.
Like a lot of moms, I have urinary incontinence. I totally wish I didn’t, though. And what people consider laughable is what I consider to be particularly embarrassing. I pee when I cough or laugh. I pee when I run, which as a marathoner really gets in the way of me actually enjoying life. I also pee when I vomit, which made having severe morning sickness with my youngest totally unbearable. And if I try to play on the trampoline with my kids? You guessed it, I pee.
I am an adult woman who frequently has to change my pants more than once a day. I am a woman in my 30s who has purchased incontinence pads, underwear, and pessaries. I’m sorry, but WTAF? This is not what I imagined being an adult women would be like.
Worse, I had no idea that other moms experienced the same. No, it’s not just me, my friends… not by a long shot. It turns out that postpartum is less of a punch line and more of a way of life for many, if not most, new moms.
According to one study published in the Journal of the Scandinavian Association of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, one third of new moms had postpartum incontinence three months after delivery. New moms who had a vaginal birth experience incontinence twice as often as moms who had a C-Section. Another 2015 study of 1,574 new moms showed that 49 percent still had urinary incontinence a year after giving birth. That’s half of new moms. A full year after childbirth. OMFG.
I HONESTLY THINK THE FACT THAT MOST MOMS HAVE TO DEAL WITH URINARY INCONTINENCE, AND ALSO HAVE TO HEAR JOKES ABOUT IT, IS A SYMPTOM OF OUR CULTURE’S GENERAL DEVALUATION OF WOMEN AND MOMS.
But before you schedule a C-Section in the hopes of side-stepping the whole incontinence thing, you should know that even C-section moms are not immune. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that women who had C-Section deliveries had a higher risk of urinary incontinence than women who had never been pregnant, so there’s really no way to avoid peeing all over yourself as you try to live your postpartum life.
Given how prevalent it is, it’s kind of unbelievable that more of us aren’t talking about urinary incontinence. Instead, we suffer in silence, wear black pants, and hope no one notices that we vaguely smell like pee once in a while. Or maybe that’s just me. And, perhaps even worse, we make jokes about it, essentially making fun of any new mom in the vicinity who is too embarrassed to speak up and say something. You don’t have to be in high school to still be negatively impacted by high school-aged humor. Trust me.
I DON’T ACTUALLY WANT TO TELL OTHER PEOPLE ABOUT MY PELVIC FLOOR ISSUES, AND I DEFINITELY DON’T WANT TO ADMIT THAT I CAN’T STOP FROM PEEING MYSELF RANDOMLY AND UNINTENTIONALLY.
I honestly think the fact that most moms have to deal with urinary incontinence, and also have to hear jokes about it, is a symptom of our culture’s general devaluation of women and moms. I mean, I think if men regularly peed themselves after becoming dads they wouldn’t think it was funny, either. Instead of an endless stream (another pun intended) of jokes, there would probably be a cure for postpartum incontinence. What plagues mom and is considered laughable would be taken seriously and addressed head on.
You would think that with the postpartum incontinence prevalence rates being as high they are that women would receive information about these risks and effective treatment for urinary incontinence, especially from their OB-GYNs or midwives, but that wasn’t my experience at all.
As Fit Pregnancy reports, treatments are available for postpartum incontinence, including physical therapy and even surgery. But, as I have learned, in the U.S. that means spending money on co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance. If you can’t afford to “fix” your pelvic floor or urinary incontinence issues, you just have to deal.
UNFORTUNATELY, SQUEEZING THE HELL OUT OF MY PELVIC FLOOR MUSCLES DIDN’T SEEM TO MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL WHEN IT CAME TO PREVENTING INCONTINENCE,
And it’s not something that anyone really wants to talk about, either. I mean, it’s more than a little bit embarrassing to admit that you pee when you don’t want to. Utterly humiliating, actually. And for me, it’s actually worse that everyone— especially other new moms — joke about it all the time. I don’t actually want to tell other people about my pelvic floor issues, and I definitely don’t want to admit that I can’t stop from peeing myself randomly and unintentionally.
Part of the problem, I think, is the blame game that occurs when moms have incontinence. My OB-GYN led me to believe that if I did enough Kegels — or pelvic floor squeezes — during pregnancy, I wouldn’t have incontinence issues. Unfortunately, squeezing the hell out of my pelvic floor muscles didn’t seem to make any difference at all when it came to preventing incontinence.
A few weeks ago I finally saw a physical therapist for my incontinence issues. He — yes, a man, which was awkward AF — told me that postpartum incontinence was really common for moms. He also told me that a few weeks of physical therapy and at-home exercises could potentially make my pelvic floor issues and incontinence issues improve. He also told me that Kegels would not be a part of my treatment plan, which made me regret all of the time I had spent trying to tone my pelvic floor.
This made me wonder why postpartum women aren’t regularly offered physical therapy as a part of their regular postpartum care. The American Physical Therapy Association has started offering a certification in Pregnancy and Postpartum Physical Therapy for their members, who are trained to treat conditions such as urinary incontinence and pelvic pain, but my midwives and OB-GYN didn’t refer me for care.
As HuffPost reports, in France, apparently, new moms pretty much automatically get 20 weeks of pelvic floor physical therapy after childbirth. They also, not surprisingly, report fewer cases of postpartum incontinence than American moms. Go figure.
So yeah, I am done with jokes about moms peeing themselves. It’s not funny. It’s a medical condition. And instead of laughing, it’s time we demanded effective treatment for incontinence and as a part of regular postpartum care. After literally growing human beings inside our bodies, we totally deserve it. No joke.
Original Article: https://www.romper.com/p/urinary-incontinence-is-real-its-time-we-stop-joking-about-it-9159730 05/23/2018
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I Tried Pelvic Floor Therapy After Having A Baby
“My bladder was like a slow faucet drip that refused to turn off.”
I used to think kegels were only done for the sake of stronger orgasms.
I’m not sure I’d ever truly done one—or at least done one properly—until last summer. By that point, I’d been peeing in my pants for oh, a good six months.
Something had to be done.
My beautiful baby girl is to blame for my current condition…well, at least the start of it. I’ll take responsibility for the lingering issues. When I gave birth to her in November 2016, I thought I’d prepared my body for her arrival.
I had a very uneventful pregnancy, with few physical complaints. I walked daily, and down-dogged my way through my second and third trimesters like a champ.
But when she dropped down into my birthing canal sometime around her due date, I felt a serious shift of pressure in my pelvis. I was full-on waddling everywhere for a week until I felt the first signs of labor.
I labored at home for six hours, then headed to the hospital for another 20 hours of very. hard. work until I could cradle my girl in my arms. I had one small vaginal tear as well as some tissue the doctor had to “retrieve” from my uterus, but otherwise, I seemed fine. In fact, the doctor told me the very next day that, because I was healthy, I’d physically feel back to normal in a few days.
I couldn’t walk like a normal person for six weeks.
‘SOMETHING MUST BE WRONG…’
…I told the doctor at a follow-up appointment I made two weeks after birth. He did a quick exam, said I was healing, and advised me to start taking sitz baths (a warm shallow bath meant to ease pain and swelling down under). That was the first time I’d ever even heard of such a thing.
Despite my thrice-daily sitz baths, I couldn’t ignore the nagging pressure on my pelvis. Something as simple as a short walk around the block with my dog made me uncomfortable, not to mention the leaks when I’d cough, laugh hard at a joke, walk down a hill—even the sound of water would do it. It was like a slow faucet drip that refused to turn off. Not catastrophic, but a real nuisance.
I eased back into exercise and tried to wish the issue away. From the outside, I looked like the picture of perfect postpartum health. I even signed up for dance classes with new mom friends just six weeks after birth. Who cared that I could never do the jumps and always had to wear a pad? Life is full of trade-offs, right?
At my six-month postpartum appointment I confessed to another doctor in the practice, “Something is still wrong.” She replied with a story about how one time her sister was walking down the street a few months postpartum and peed all over herself. “Just give it time,” she promised.
This response didn’t sit right with me—or my pelvic floor. But I wanted so badly to believe her. While some very lucky women do heal over time (although, let’s be honest, are our vaginas ever really the same after pushing a human out of them?), I didn’t seem to be one of them. An estimated one in three women suffers from some type of pelvic floor disorder, including urinary incontinence, according to a study from Kaiser Permanente. So why did I know so little about it?
‘AS TIME PASSED AND NOTHING IMPROVED, I KNEW MY BODY DESERVED MORE.’
Dr. Google brought me to the words “pelvic floor therapy” and my most research-obsessed mom friend confirmed that this was a thing and I should check it out.
At my first appointment with my physical therapist, Ingrid Harm-Ernandes, my suspicions were confirmed. She asked me a litany of questions—rating my pain, describing my accidents—before doing a physical exam.
What started out like a pap smear (I was naked from the waist down; she was gloved) turned into a series of tests on the current state of my muscles inside my vagina. She asked me to cough to see if the muscles would contract like they should (lifting up against the downward pressure of a cough), and then she very slowly and carefully used a finger to press on each tight muscle until it loosened up. The tighter the muscle, the more uncomfortable it felt for me. But as she loosened each muscle—which usually took around 20 to 30 seconds—I felt better. Her diagnosis: stress incontinence (when physical movement causes leaks) and slight urge incontinence (when the urge to pee can’t be controlled).
“The pelvic floor is like a hammock—stretching from your pubic bone to your tailbone and side to side—that holds up your bladder, bowel, and uterus. Just like other muscles in your body, your pelvic floor muscles can get tight, weak, function poorly or can become painful,” says Harm-Ernandes. “In your case, they’re weak but also tight at the same time,” she told me.
So anytime my bladder was put under sudden pressure, my muscles were too tight to contract quickly and block off the flow of urine. But there was good news! If I did daily kegels and core exercises to build strength and visited her on a regular basis, I could recover.
It turns out you can’t just start doing kegels and cross your fingers. You need a professional to assess the damage and tailor a recovery program just for you. “A proper kegel is an isolated contraction of your pelvic floor muscles without using other muscles around the pelvic floor,” she says. “Think of it more as a drawing-up-and-in sensation than a squeeze.”
The first kegels I did properly took an enormous amount of concentration, but now I’m doing five daily sets of them. I do 10 long ones—drawing up and in for 10 seconds and then slowly releasing—as well as 10 one-second ones. I also do core exercises, which include alternating leg and arm raises, one-legged squats and a marching isolation exercise. And to be honest, for being a fairly disciplined person, I’ve had a tough time making this a priority. I’ve made excuses to myself about being too busy, I’ve set alarms on my phone as reminders. I have good days where I do them all, and others where I’m lucky if I do it once.
Every two to three weeks, I visit my therapist and we walk through what I’ve done, I promise to drink more water (not drinking enough actually irritates the bladder and makes it worse), and then we finish with an internal exam. In an experience that could easily feel invasive and uncomfortable, her professionalism and empathetic approach makes all the difference.
Any progress is better than none, and besides a few setbacks (turns out it’s hard to hold your pelvic floor when you’re full-body coughing with the flu), the leaks are less and less frequent, and the pressure is slowly lifting overall. My goal is to go for a run this summer—something I haven’t been able to do in two years!—and sign up for dance classes again by the fall.
Original Article: https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a19725028/pelvic-floor-therapy/ 04/12/2018 – Jourdan Fairchild
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The Best Move To Make Sure Your Bladder Never Leaks Again
No, we’re not talking about kegels.
Whether you’re getting ready to have a baby and want to strengthen those below-the-belt muscles, you leak a little every time you do box jumps, or you just want to keep things nice and strong down there—it’s a good idea to start strengthening your pelvic floor.
“If someone is having symptoms of any kind of leaking urine, that means they have pelvic floor dysfunction—they inherently have a weakness,” says Debbie Cohen, P.T., C.S.C.S., owner of Fundamental Physical Therapy & Pelvic Wellness in Poway, California. She adds that while a lot of CrossFitters tout a little leaking as a badge of honor, no amount of leakage is normal.
If you’re sick of kegels, a lot of the moves you do for glute and hip strength actually work your pelvic floor, too. “All the hip muscles attach at the pelvic bone, so those will help with strengthening,” says Cohen.
Two of the best: marching glute bridge and a goblet sumo squat.
Both use the pelvic floor as an accessory muscle to the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and adductors, Cohen shares. But beginners should start with the marching glute bridge.
“The main difference between these two moves is that one is against gravity and the other isn’t. In the sumo squat, your pelvic organs are weighing against the pelvic floor, not to mention the dumbbell in your hands, so it’s a little more challenging as you go down and up,” she explains.
The glute bridge, on the other hand, has your pelvis horizontal with gravity. As with any weakness, you want to fix it by starting with the foundational exercise with minimal resistance and work your way up to the one that’s harder as your strength progresses.
Cohen adds that while both these moves are a great addition to your workout routine, if you’re having semi-regular urine leakage or pelvic pain, you should consult with a specialist. “The best moves to strengthen your pelvic floor are personalized to the problem, so working with a trained professional can really help,” she adds.
Here’s how to do both moves:
MARCHING GLUTE BRIDGE
How to: Lie faceup on the floor with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. Raise your hips so your body forms a straight line from your shoulders to your knees. Lift one knee to your chest, lower back to the start, and lift your other knee to your chest. Continue alternating back and forth.
GOBLET SUMO SQUAT
How to: Grasp the head of a heavy dumbbell and hold it in front of your chest. Set your feet at about twice shoulder width, your toes turned out slightly. Lower your body down by pushing your hips back and bending your knees. Pause, then slowly push yourself back to the starting position. That’s one rep.
Original Article: https://www.womenshealthmag.com/fitness/a19760745/best-move-for-pelvic-floor/ 04/13/2018
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8 Natural Ways To Treat An Overactive Bladder
About a year ago, I began noticing I was getting up several times a night to pee. Once I thought about it, I realized I was peeing a lot during the day, too. The problem escalated and escalated until I was getting up three to five times a night, leading to severe sleep deprivation. Desperate for a solution, I got tested for interstitial cystitis, ovarian cysts, diabetes, kidney stones, you name it. But with all the results negative, I instead got the frustrating diagnosis of overactive bladder (OAB).
I describe an OAB diagnosis as frustrating because it doesn’t have a simple cure. Your options are to go on medication, to see a physical therapist who can teach you helpful exercises or an osteopath who can manipulate your nerves, to try a more drastic treatment like Bladder Botox injections or electrical bladder stimulation, or to make a bunch of small changes to your lifestyle that can gradually alleviate the problem. “Even though treatment options exist, many patients opt for natural and homeopathic remedies, since no single treatment has been proven to be most effective,” Caleb Backe, Health and Wellness Expert for Maple Holistics, tells Bustle.
There are two main symptoms of OAB, Los Angeles-based urologist S. Adam Ramin, MD tells Bustle: urgency frequency (feeling like you have to pee a lot) and urgency incontinence (not being able to hold it in). Some people with OAB (like me) only have the first symptom, while others have both.
“Whether it’s that sense of urgency when you laugh or the incessant fear of not making it to the bathroom in time, women who suffer from an overactive bladder or urinary incontinence are often embarrassed by their condition and sometimes feel like the only people on the planet who must endure it,” says Ramin. “In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. While urinary incontinence does affect women more often than men, millions of women deal with some type of bladder control issue at some point in their lives. And the truth is this: If you suffer from an overactive bladder, it doesn’t have to be a condition that puts you in adult diapers for the rest of your life. In fact, there are some simple diet and lifestyle changes that can put you back on the road to bladder control.”
I know this is true because when I make it through the day without caffeine and alcohol, avoid sugar in the evening, relax before bed, and refrain from drinking anything a few hours before bedtime, I only get up to pee once or twice. I initially discounted this advice because, hey, I don’t want to give up alcohol or caffeine or sugar or *gasp* stop working at night. But after I tried a few medications that all had undesirable side effects, I realized lifestyle changes were worth it — and would probably make me healthier in the process.
If you’re experiencing symptoms of overactive bladder, like an urge to pee eight or more times a day, urinary leaks, or the need to wake up to pee twice or more per night, see a urologist. There are a lot of underlying conditions it could be related to, and you can learn more about treatment options. Whether there is some underlying cause or it’s just plain old OAB, though, these strategies should improve the condition.
1 Cut Back On These Bladder Irritants
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Just this evening, I realized my bladder was feeling much more irritated than usual. Then, I thought back to what I’d just eaten: Thai curry and a smoothie containing orange juice. Curry, oranges, and juice are all on Urology San Antonio’s list of bladder irritants. “Studies show that spicy foods can sometimes be an irritant to the lining of the bladder,” says Ramin. “Fare like spicy chili, chili peppers, or horseradish are examples of foods that can cause such irritation. Likewise, highly acidic foods can trigger a similar response.”
It may not be realistic for you to give up all foods that could irritate your bladder, but you can start to take note of which foods are worst for you, and avoid those when you can (especially before bed).
And a word to the wise: People often say you should drink cranberry juice for bladder health, but that’s to ward off UTIs. When it comes to bladder irritation, cranberry juice — along with most kinds of juice — could have the opposite effect you want. “Due to its high acidity, it can actually worsen the condition,” says Ramin.
2 Cut Back On Diuretics Like Caffeine and Alcohol
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Caffeine and alcohol are both double trouble, says Ramin. They’re diuretics (they make you pee) and they stimulate bladder function. “If you suffer from urinary incontinence, one of your worst enemies can be caffeinated beverages,” he says. “Though it can be much easier said than done, limiting or eliminating caffeine altogether has been known to be successful in diminishing and resolving issues of urinary incontinence in some women.”
Similarly, he adds, “alcoholic beverages act as bladder stimulants and diuretics in most people. So when you have a problem with urinary continence, consuming even slight amounts of alcohol can make matters worse.”
If you can’t function without your daily cup of coffee, try to keep it to the morning so you’re not getting up to pee at night. And if you like having a glass of wine to wind down, at least limit it to one and keep it as far from bedtime as possible. Or, just take a break from caffeine or alcohol for a week or two, and see if the benefits you notice are worth it.
3 Stay Hydrated
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So what should you drink, then? When you’re already a peeing machine, drinking water may be the last thing you want to do. According to a 1,000-person survey by Poise, almost half of women believe that limiting water intake will limit their bladder leakage. The problem with this is, dehydration dilutes your urine, making it more concentrated and consequently more irritating to your bladder, Poise partner and OB/GYN Dr. Jessica Shepherd tells Bustle.
However, you have to balance this information with the knowledge that drinking before bed will increase your chances of waking up to pee. So, Shepherd recommends drinking eight eight-ounce glasses during the day and then cutting off fluids four hours before bedtime.
4 Do Kegel Exercises
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Kegel exercises — when you repeatedly squeeze and relax your PC muscles (the ones you use to hold in pee) — have a ton of benefits, two of which are reducing urinary incontinence and urinary urgency, Brent Reider, an author and referee for medical and scientific peer review journals and designer of several FDA-cleared medical devices including the Yarlap, tells Bustle.
“Exercise therapy to tone and re-educate the pelvic floor muscles is an essential aspect of pelvic care and often recommended by physicians as the first line of overactive bladder treatment,” he says. “The muscle contractions that cause urge/OAB (and can be the cause of nocturia) are like spasms caused from inactivity and where the muscle needs respiration. Blood flow from the workout gets the muscle respirated.”
How do you do them, then? “One of the most promising techniques is for patients to trigger their pelvic floor muscles (kegels) as soon as they sense the urge to urinate and engage these muscles for around 10 seconds,” says Backe. “Alternatively, you can do five to seven rapid contractions until the urgency diminishes, and then go to the toilet.”
If you can’t find the energy to do Kegel exercises or want to make sure you’re doing them right, a device called the Yarlap will do them for you by delivering electric pulses to your vagina that cause it to contract. As an added bonus, many Yarlap users also find that they start having better sex, says Reider.
5 Try Physical Therapy
Dmitry Naumov/Fotolia
Regular sessions with a pelvic floor physical therapist can help retrain your bladder muscles and nerves through kegels and other exercises. “Although this modern form of physiotherapy can be extremely time-consuming and frustrating, it offers patients the best chance of regaining control of their bladder,” says Backe. “These bladder drills function to retrain the brain to retain the power of the bladder’s muscle contractions.”
The exercise program to help with overactive bladder is called “bladder retraining,” Rachel Gelman, DPT, PT, Branch Director at the Pelvic Health and Rehabilitation Center, tells Bustle. “Many people have developed habits over time, like going just in case, so then the bladder starts to send a signal that it is full when it really isn’t,” she says.
“Sometimes, the pelvic floor muscles can become restricted or hypertonic/spasmotic, which can lead to urinary urgency and frequency,” Gelman says. “Working on the myofascial restrictions with manual therapy and exercises to help relax the muscles may be beneficial can help address these symptoms as well. Many times, patients actually have poor bowel habits and suffer from constipation, which can lead to pelvic floor dysfunction and bladder issues, so working on bowel mechanics can actually improve bladder symptoms.” Since the problems are different for each person, the exercises will be, too, so a physical therapist can recommend the right ones for you.
6 Reduce Stress
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When my bladder issues first started, a psychic and a spiritual intuitive both told me the main cause was anxiety. I didn’t listen until my urologist, a Yale Medical School graduate, said the same thing. The nerves in your brain connect to the nerves in your bladder, he explained, so anxiety can lead to hypersensitive bladder nerves.
After learning this, I think I figured out what happened to me. I was dealing with crippling insomnia when my bladder issues started, and I’d become obsessive about everything that could keep me up, my bladder included. I’d lie in bed for a few minutes then get up to pee again and again out of fear that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t sleep. By thinking about my bladder so much, I must have built up the connections between it and my brain, developing a hyper-awareness. That’s my theory, at least.
This is just one way that anxiety can lead to bladder issues. Whatever the mechanism, it’s pretty clear that it does. One 2016 study in Urology found that overactive bladder patients had more anxiety than controls. “Mental stress can cause increase autonomic nervous system activity,” says Ramin. “This leads to increased bowel and bladder activity. Increased bowel leads to irritable bowel syndrome (aka IBS). Increased bladder activity leads to overactive bladder.”
Stress reduction can mean many different things, from seeing a therapist to spending time doing things you enjoy. If you have issues with peeing at night, doing something relaxing before bed can be a huge help (taking a bath helps for me).
7 Get Acupuncture
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Acupuncture — a Chinese healing technique where someone places tiny needles in your skin near pressure points — can help with all sorts of physical ailments, and research suggests overactive bladder is one of them.
One study by Whipps Cross University Hospital and University College of London Hospital found that 79 percent of overactive bladder patients saw significant improvement after 10 weeks of weekly 30-minute sessions. These patients had already tried typical treatments like behavioral changes and medications. An advantage to acupuncture is that unlike medications, it doesn’t tend to cause many side effects (though there are a few rare ones).
8 Get Visceral Manipulation
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For a fairly new technique called Visceral Manipulation, an osteopath uses their hands to move around the nerves in your pelvis and abdomen. “Visceral manipulation refers to manual therapy techniques that work directly with organs and their surrounding connective tissues to restore normal motility, structure, and function,” OB/GYN Eden Fromberg, DO tells Bustle. Connective tissue is the scaffolding that connects different parts of the body, from the surface of the skin to the internal organs.
“Removing stuck stress from the tissues, literally hydrating and unsticking dry connective tissue, restores the sensitivity of the core and neurofascial system and kicks in repair and healing processes,” Fromberg says. Visceral manipulation can help alleviate overactive bladder by changing the way your bladder nerves communicate with the rest of your body.
Living with OAB is truly awful. I would know — with all the sleep mine has lost me, I don’t remember what it’s like to not be exhausted. But I try to think of it this way: Discomfort is your body’s way of telling you something’s wrong. And maybe if you fix whatever’s wrong by making the changes needed for a healthier bladder, your whole body and mind will also become healthier in the process. At least that’s what I’m hoping.
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The common but embarrassing side-effect of hay fever plaguing women
Stress urinary incontinence is when pee leaks out from the bladder when it is under stress – like when you cough and sneeze
There’s a little side effect of hay fever that few people talk about – pee.
For women who suffer with incontinence, every sneeze hay fever brings on comes with a side of panic.
ALAMY
The condition is essentially a loss of bladder control caused by weakened muscles down there.
Incontinence is more common in women who have given birth because of the incredible strain it puts on the pelvic floor muscles, but it can affect anyone.
Stress urinary incontinence is when wee leaks out from the bladder when it is under stress – like when you cough and sneeze.
So women with this condition who also suffer from hay fever can suffer through a pretty rough few months.
GETTY
The sunny weather is set to shine, but that brings with it a higher pollen count and, you guessed it, more sneezing.
Luckily, there is one exercise you can do to strengthen your pelvic floor and help put an end to incontinence.
GETTY IMAGES
Pelvic floor muscle exercises also help prevent the unthinkable – prolapse of a woman’s internal organs, something that can happen after giving birth.
Pelvic floor exercises strengthen the muscles around the bladder, vagina or penis and back passage.
Also known as kegels, the exercises can help prevent urinary incontinence, treat prolapse and even make sex better by increasing sensitivity and boosting orgasms in women.
How can you do pelvic floor exercises?
To strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, sit and squeeze and release 10-15 times in a row.
Don’t hold your breath or tighten your tummy, bum or thigh muscles at the same time.
When you get used to the exercises, you can hold the squeezes for a few seconds – and do more reps.
Each week add more squeezes to your daily routine and within a few months you should notice results, enjoying greater sensitivity during sex.
Keeping your pelvic floor strong can also prevent the unthinkable – prolapse of a woman’s internal organs, something that can happen after giving birth.
In severe cases a uterine prolapse can result in a woman needing to undergo a hysterectomy, leaving her infertile.
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