Will Urinary Incontinence Go Away? And How Do You Treat It?

Ladies, do you find yourself needing to wear a pad when you go out for the day? Or consistently checking to find out where the bathroom is?

Has running, jumping, laughing, coughing, or playing with kids been filled with the concern of leakage and the embarrassment you might feel if there is an issue controlling your bladder?

You are not alone!

Urinary incontinence is a common condition that affects millions of people worldwide. It can be embarrassing, uncomfortable, and often interferes with daily life. If you’re experiencing urinary incontinence, you might be wondering if it will go away on its own or what you can do to manage it.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the causes of urinary incontinence and discuss ways to help reduce or prevent leakage.

To better understand it, first, we will need to talk about the different types of urinary incontinence. This is important to understand because different types of urinary incontinence require different types of treatment, and there are indications when the treatment is not working for particular types of incontinence.

The Different Types of Incontinence

Stress Incontinence 

Stress urinary incontinence is a condition where urine leaks out when there is pressure on a woman’s bladder. This can happen during exercise, coughing, sneezing, or lifting something heavy. SUI is caused by weak muscles around the urethra and can be treated with pelvic floor exercises or surgery.

Different activities or parts of your day-to-day that put pressure on the abdominal cavity and when this happens there is a good chance that you will experience leakage. The abdominal cavity is defined as the diaphragm muscle on the top and the pelvic floor on the bottom.

What can happen is that there is too much pressure in this area and this will cause leakage because the pelvic floor cannot hold all that pressure in. In many instances, especially after childbirth or as you age, it is common to hear that this is normal. While, yes, it does happen to many people, it is not something that you have to live with the rest of your life and there are ways to treat it.

There are many ways to treat stress incontinence and this is actually one of the easier type of urinary incontinence to work on because we can strengthen the pelvic floor, work on the diaphragm, get more back and abdominal control, and ultimately get control of the abdominal area and container which will help you reduce or eliminate leakage while doing the things you love.

Urge Incontinence

Urge urinary incontinence is a sudden, strong need to urinate and people feeling they cannot make it to the bathroom.  This type of incontinence may be caused by a bladder infection, pelvic floor muscles being to tight and being asked to hold a full bladder, or even the position in which the bladder sits.

The bladder can sit in different positions due to problems in the gut. In this instance, you would need manual therapy to help get the bladder back in the right position. Ideally if you are dealing with urge incontinence, you would want to see a pelvic floor specialist who has training in visceral manipulation to really be able to work the abdominal can area that I discuss in the video below.

Overflow Incontinence

Overflow incontinence is a type of urinary incontinence that occurs when the bladder becomes overfilled and cannot be emptied fully when you have gone to the bathroom. It can cause leakage of small amounts of urine, or sudden, uncontrollable releases of urine.

This is often caused by the pelvic floor muscles being too tight. A really simple trick to see if the pelvic floor is the issue, when you are sitting to pee, lean to either direction and see if that allows for a little more to come out. This is changing the dynamics of the pelvic floor and in doing so will allow a little more to come out. That is a quick way to see that the pelvic floor could be the issue.

It is a perfect band-aid solution, and while it is great short term to relieve the issue, it is not something we want to do long-term. The longer you let the pelvic floor be an issue, the worse the problem can become and it could cause you even more problems as time goes on.

Combination Incontinence

This is a combination of the different types of incontinence. The most common combination of these types are stress and urge. So again, this would be leakage when you are running, jumping, laughing, coughing, or sneezing and also not being able to make it to the restroom that comes with urge incontinence.

Issues with the pelvic floor and diaphragm are common with this type of incontinence, as well. Combined with the positioning of the bladder, possibly issues with constipation that are also putting pressure on the pelvic floor and gut area, these are all problems that could be causing the types of incontinence that you are experiencing.

Will Urinary Incontinence Go Away?

Unfortunately, incontinence is not something that will just go away. You need to treat it as soon as possible, and if the problem continues without treatment it could make the problem worse.

Physical therapy can help with reducing and eliminating leakage associated with incontinence. Physical therapists provide various treatments to help patients regain control over their bladders and improve bladder function. These treatments include strengthening exercises for the pelvic floor muscles and manual therapy to reduce tension in the pelvic area

When should you seek out a Women’s Health Specialist?

If you are struggling with leakage, and it is limiting your social interaction, you are concerned about it when exercising, and it is negatively impacting your quality of life.

Dealing with incontinence can be embarrassing, stressful, uncomfortable, and discouraging. That is why we recommend that you come see us so we can help you in reducing or eliminating leakage altogether.

If you want to get back to doing the things you love without the fear of leakage, we would love to invite you for a pelvic pain assessment, which will enable you to get a full diagnosis and finally understand the real reason your pain won’t go away!

You can contact us by telephone at 425-658-4944 to claim your pelvic pain assessment or by completing our enquiry form in under 30 seconds.

Not sure whether physical therapy is right for you?

We appreciate that you may want to find out more and ask some questions about private physical therapy which is you can arrange a FREE Discovery Session or a FREE Telephone Consultation.

Other Free Resources To Help You With Chronic Pain

Download our free pelvic, knee, neck and shoulder, and back pain reports.

Read our blog – How To Stop Peeing When You Laugh!

Read our blog – Are You Tired of Your Life Being Run by Your Bladder?

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