Incontinence happens when you lose control of your bladder or bowel, causing accidental leaks. It often results from the weakening of important muscles that control the opening and closing of the bladder. As a result, something as small as sneezing or coughing that exerts pressure on the bladder triggers leaks. This condition can embarrass you and disrupt your everyday life with the constant need to rush to the bathroom.
While incontinence is more common in women due to pregnancy, men are not spared either. You can end up with incontinence from infections, vehicle accidents, or stress. Aging doesn’t directly cause it, but older people are more likely to suffer from incontinence.
The good news is there are many ways to manage incontinence. With some lifestyle changes, you can make incontinence more manageable.
Here are the top 7 tips and tricks to help you manage incontinence:
1. Use Quality Incontinence Products
Using the right incontinence products makes managing incontinence easy. But what makes a great product? The ideal product should have good absorbency and feel comfortable when worn, not too tight or emitting an awful smell. Picking the right product starts with understanding the nature of the incontinence through a proper diagnosis.
There are different types of incontinence, which explains the variety of products designed to manage each type. Unique products like booster pads help increase the absorbency capacity of these incontinence products, preventing leaks.
2. Maintain a Healthy Weight
Most people know the benefits of keeping a healthy weight, from reducing heart problems to exposure to diabetes. What most people need to learn is its impact on incontinence. A study on overweight women on a 6-month diet and exercise program reveals that reducing weight lowered the frequency of urinary incontinence by about half.
So, adopting lifestyle adjustments that promote weight loss, like following a balanced diet, avoiding junk foods, and exercising regularly, can help manage incontinence.
3. Avoid Bladder Irritants
Some foods and drinks irritate the bladder, worsening the condition. Reduce intake of alcohol, coffee, spicy foods, acidic beverages, and even smoking to avoid bladder irritation that induces bladder spasms and causes frequent urination. However, this doesn’t mean you avoid taking fluids entirely, as that could make the urine highly concentrated and acidic, worsening bowel irritation.
Find the ideal amount of water to drink daily to avoid too much or too little. Usually, around 7 glasses of water are needed to keep you from dehydration while avoiding triggering incontinence.
4. Practice Pelvic Exercises
Pelvic floor muscles support the bladder, and pelvic floor dysfunction, which is mostly common in pregnant women, often causes incontinence. Practicing pelvic floor exercises or Kegels can help relieve and strengthen the muscles and improve incontinence.
To do the kegel exercise, identify the pelvic muscles by trying to stop gas or urine when relieving yourself. Once you know the muscles involved, practice contacting them and holding them for 3-5 seconds each. Repeat it in cycles for about 10 times. As you do the exercises, be sure to relax your butt, leg, and abdominal muscles to avoid involving the wrong muscles.
5. Train your bladder
If frequent trips to the bathroom are eating up your time, bladder training might be the solution. Timed voiding or bladder training involves planning for bathroom breaks and gradually increasing the time.
For instance, you have to visit the toilet every hour; bladder training means extending it by 30 minutes first, then you can add to 2 hours as your bladder adapts. The goal is to get to holding urges for at least 4 hrs, allowing you to carry on with your day-to-day activities more freely.
6. Eat Healthy
We’ve talked about strengthening pelvic floor muscles through kegel exercises, but your efforts will be derailed if you don’t watch out for issues like constipation. Straining caused by constipation weakens the pelvic floor muscles. It can also stimulate bladder dysfunction, which isn’t helping with incontinence. That’s because the rectum and bladder are closely located, so pressure from constipation causes the bladder to shrink, reducing the amount of urine it can hold. This makes people feel the urge to relieve themselves and even triggers leaks.
Eat fiber-rich foods like vegetables, fruits, and cereals to avoid constipation. Drinking a sufficient amount of water also helps soften poop allowing easy passage and preventing constipation and worsening incontinence.
7. Lift light Weights
Lifting heavy objects strains the pelvic floor muscles, which triggers incontinence. You will be surprised that even something as simple as lifting a small child or shopping bag can affect the pelvic floor muscles. If you must lift something occasionally, tighten the pelvic floor muscles first. To minimize leakages, you also want to avoid strenuous activities like jumping and trampolining.
Conclusion
Dealing with incontinence can be stressful. The condition is demanding, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But don’t let it frustrate you by making you think that you are alone. It affects millions of people from all walks of life across the world. Remember that too much stress could worsen the condition, so in addition to opening up to your friends and family for support, use these tips and tricks.
By using the right incontinence product, maintaining a healthy weight, avoiding bladder irritants, practicing kegel exercise, training your bladder, eating healthy, and lifting light, you can better manage incontinence to lead a more active and fulfilling life.