Don’t suffer in silence if you have a leaky bladder. Talk with your doctor. Urinary incontinence (UI) can be a sign of a serious medical condition, such as multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease. Although some people need medication or surgery, many more improve with simple lifestyle changes.
For example, pelvic muscle exercises, such as Kegel exercises, may help restore control to weak muscles around your bladder. That may lead to improvement that tightens a leaky bladder, prevents embarrassment, and gives you peace of mind. Follow these instructions to tone up your pelvic muscles.
- Identify the pelvic muscles that need exercising. Do this by stopping and starting the flow of urine several times when using the toilet.
- Tighten the muscles a little at a time. Contract your muscles slowly, hold for a count of 10, and relax the muscles slowly.
- Repeat these exercises for the anal pelvic muscles. To find these mus¬cles, imagine you’re trying to hold back a bowel movement, without tensing your legs, stomach, or buttock muscles.
- Practice tightening all the pelvic muscles together, moving from back to front.
- Start by repeating each exercise five times, three to five times a day.
- Gradually work up to 20 or 30 repetitions.
Other Ways to Keep Your Bladder Healthy
Here are other ways you can do to keep your bladder healthy and disease-free:
- Maintain the right weight for your height. The heavier you weigh, the more pressure you put on your bladder. Thus, if you are overweight, start dieting and exercising to achieve just the righ weight.
- Take it easy with medications. There are a lot of medicines that can worsen UI, including diuretics and opioids. The best thing to do is talk to your doctor, and tell him your situation so he can prescribe the right medicine and dosage for you.
- Watch what you drink. Coffee, tea, beer, soda, and anything the contains caffeine and alcohol can affect your bladder activity and cause leakage.
- Stop smoking. Aside from being a primary cause of bladder cancer, it can also easily irritate your bladder.
- Drink lots of water. This will help clean any infection you have in your urinary tract. However, this will make pee a lot, so make sure that you go whenever you need to and do not hold it in.
- Do diagnostic tests preiodically. It must always be considered that you can acquire a disease without actually experiencing symptoms.