It’s not easy when we’re dealing with urinary incontinence. It’s a real inconvenience, however, the stress and embarrassment that come with urinary incontinence can almost be worse than the symptoms themselves.
If you’re here, you’re probably experiencing some of the symptoms of urinary incontinence and are wondering what you can do to stop it from happening any longer. However, there can be many types of urinary incontinence and knowing what you may have will clarify what you can do to help it. All have one thing in common: you pass urine unintentionally.
The most common types of urinary incontinence are:
Stress incontinence: this does not have anything to do with being stressed, it refers to what happens when your bladder is put under stress. If you have stress incontinence, you’ll leak urine when your bladder is put under additional pressure, or ‘stress’, in moments such as laughing, coughing, sneezing, lifting something, or during exercise.
Urge incontinence: This may sometimes be called urgency incontinence because it’s when you need a very sudden, or urgent, need to have a wee; often a very intense feeling during which you immediately need to find a toilet before having an accident. You may only have seconds between the feeling starting and leaking urine.
If you have urge incontinence, you may notice that you need to urinate very often, including during the night which, frankly, can be exhausting. Overactive bladder is a type of urinary incontinence characterized by sudden, involuntary bladder contractions causing an unstoppable urge to urinate.
Mixed incontinence: Mixed incontinence is when you experience symptoms of both urge and stress incontinence. Overflow incontinence is a type of urinary incontinence caused by bladder obstruction or blockage, leading to urine leakage.
What to Do if You Experience Urinary Incontinence and Urine Leakage?
Firstly, go to your GP to get a diagnosis. This is important so they can rule out and confirm things causing your urinary incontinence. Consulting with healthcare professionals can help manage symptoms and improve bladder control.
If you must wait before your GP appointment, it may be useful to make use of this time to keep a bladder diary to present to your doctor at the appointment. This should include what you drink and how much; how often you need to wee; how much urine you pass; how many times you urgently need to urinate; and how many episodes of urinary incontinence you experience. The NHS suggests keeping a diary for at least 3 days. Bladder training, such as urinating on a schedule and using techniques like distraction and breathing exercises, can also help gradually regain control over the bladder. If you’d like to learn more about the process of diagnosing your urinary incontinence, this information from the NHS may be useful.
Kegel Exercises and Pelvic Floor Exercises
If your GP suggests that daily Kegel exercises would be recommended for your type of urinary incontinence, then they’re suggesting that you need to improve the strength of your pelvic floor muscles through pelvic floor muscle training. If so, then you should know that there is a non-invasive treatment that can dramatically assist you with your pelvic floor exercise and considerably speed up how fast you notice results.
Kegel exercises can help control urination by strengthening the pelvic floor muscles.
Emsella Chair
The Emsella chair by BTL is a revolutionary physiotherapy treatment, endorsed by gynaecologists and urologists worldwide, that painlessly strengthens ALL your pelvic floor muscles, not just those that can be controlled with voluntary movements such as those engaged during Kegel exercises.
An artificial urinary sphincter is another treatment option for stress incontinence in men, helping to keep the urethra closed to prevent leaks.
Emsella is suitable for both men and women with urge, stress, or mixed incontinence. It uses safe High-Intensity Focused Electromagnetic Energy-it’s quite the tongue twister, so let’s refer to this energy as HIFEM for ease. The HIFEM energy generates thousands of supramaximal pelvic floor muscle contractions during your 28-minute session; all whilst you sit comfortably and fully clothed on the Emsella chair. Just to put it into perspective, each Emsella session is the equivalent of you performing 11,000 Kegel exercises.
The Emsella treatment conveniently slots into our client’s lifestyles as it doesn’t require the use of any medication or surgery. A course 6 of treatments is typically taken over 3 weeks, each session being 28 minutes long enough time for a cup of tea and a flick through a magazine!
Emsella Reviews
If you’re wondering what Emsella feels like, what kind of results are achieved, and how the treatment may improve your quality of life then we have a couple of reviews that you may find interesting:
My Journey with Urinary Stress Incontinence & The Emsella Chair
Is the Emsella Treatment Worth it?