Urinary Incontinence Information
| Medical Term | Common Name | Simple description | More detail |
| Stress Urinary Incontinence | Weak bladder | Accidental leaks when you laugh cough or sneeze | Stress Urinary Incontinence |
| Urgency, Frequency and Urge Incontinence | I cannot wait! |
Hurrying to the toilet and not always making it in time. Passing urine more often than you used to. |
Urgency, Frequency and Urge Incontinence |
| Urinary incontinence | Weak Bladder | Inability to control urine leaking from bladder | Please refer to Stress Urinary Incontinence, Urge Incontinence |
If you only have Stress Urinary Incontinence, the good news
is that you can quite easily do something about. You can do this in most
cases without drugs, surgery or pain. Pelvic Floor (muscle) Exercise is
well known to be the most conservative and effective form of treatment
for this condition.
Pelvic Floor (muscle) Exercise effectiveness is greatly
enhanced when biofeedfeedback
devices are used. If you think pelvic floor exercises are:
1. Tricky to learn
2. Hard to tell if you are doing correctly
3. Uncertain and boring
4. Help overcome many bladder problems
4. Produce results faster with feedback
5. Absolutely necessary for good health
6. A great way to improve your love life
You are right! What you need to find are ways to overcome points 1, 2,
and 3, so that you can benefit from points 4, 5, and 6! Lets look at the
various products on the market and see if they help with points 1, 2,
and 3.
Product
1. Easier to learn
2. Visual indictation of achievment
3. Exercise more interesting
4. Ongoing costs?
PFX2
Yes
Yes
Yes
None
Ladycare
Weights
Yes
No
No
None
Peritron
Yes
Yes
Yes
Battery
Neurotrac
4 Continence Stimulator
Yes
Yes
Yes
Battery
Kegelmaster
Yes
No
No
None
Myself
Yes
Yes
Yes
Batteries and probes
If you don't do your Pelvic Floor or Kegel exercises, what
might happen?
This thought might help motiviate you to do something. If you don't do anything to overcome stress urinary incontinence, it will most likely get worse. The other options are:
- Drugs
- Surgery
As for surgery, there are always risks. And even if the surgery is successful, it's still necessary to do the pelvic floor or Kegel exercises.
What are Kegel exercises?
Other devices may provide resistance, but unless they provide visual biofeedback, they are not doing what Kegel proposed as being necessary in the treatment of stress urinary incontinence. In 1951 he offered this theoretical explanation: "The procedure (teaching pelvic floor exercises) may be compared with the effort...to teach wiggling of the ears with the aid of a mirror." Some devices on the market, using the name "Kegel....." are really nothing like the original Kegel device and do not use his principle of visual biofeedback.
What else do the pelvic floor muscles do?
The basic role of the pelvic floor muscles is to support the internal organs. Without proper support, the internal organs respond to gravity and start falling out holes they are not meant to fallout of. This is what a prolapse is. Without good support, the cervix, the uterus, the bladder and even the colon can all begin to prolapse through the vagina.
But the pelvic floor muscles have another function. They provide sensory feedback to the brain that the brain interprets as extreme pleasure. Yes, we are talking about sex! Good tone in the pelvic floor muscles is vital to a fulfilling sexual experience.