Stop Urine Leakage Naturally: Getting To The Root Of Incontinence

You may feel embarrassed to discuss your urinary incontinence with others. But there’s no need to be shy about it, and you‘ll feel much better when you discuss it with someone who can help.

If you leak during your everyday activities such as sneezing, crying, laughing, coughing, exercising, or heavy lifting, you are not alone.

 A celebrity spokeswoman once asks a stage full of backup dancers,

“Ladies, who pee a little when you laugh?”

Nearly half of the women raise their hands in a half-wave.

“Uh-huh, you see?” the spokeswoman says to the camera before launching into a sales pitch for her favorite urinary incontinence pad- aka adult diapers.

The adult diapers industries are trying to convince you that urinary leakage happens to everyone- no big deal- to sell their product.

No doubt, there are many women who are experiencing accidental urine leakage, but it is not normal.

Various treatments are available, and there are no reasons why you shouldn’t seek it.

Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

Did you know that one in three women experience some form of urinary incontinence or pelvic floor dysfunction?

Let us first know what pelvic floor is!

A pelvic floor is a group of forgotten muscles; people rarely talk about it until there’s a problem.

However, they play an unbelievably important role in your everyday life. Pelvic floor muscles stretch across the bottom of your pelvic like a taut, flexible trampoline. 

These groups of muscles support your bladder, bowels, vagina, and your rectum. 

How Your Pelvic Floor Muscles Become Weak?

Heavy weightlifting, vagina birth, and some active exercise routines can upset your pelvic floor.

When you are giving birth, the pelvic floor can even pull off the pubic bone- this is known as a levator avulsion.

Your pelvic floor regulates how well you can tighten the muscles in your lower abdomen. 

So, it’s often showing you a sign of weak pelvic floor when your urine is leaking when sneezing, coughing, laughing, or exercising.

When your pelvic floor is weak, you may feel a distinct sensation of heaviness in your vagina.

But how do you know where your pelvic floor is?

See the picture below-

Image credit Wikipedia

Pelvic Floor Function

The pelvic floor muscles have four distinct functions.

1. They play an essential role by holding up the organs like the uterus, bladder, and rectum.
2. They work closely with your abdominal wall muscles to stabilize the core, which is vital to everything from standing to walking and any other physical activities.
3. Pelvic floor muscles also play a role in sexual activities; they allow intercourse and contribute to orgasm in women and men.
4. Pelvic floor muscles keep us continent by acting as sphincter muscles, contracting to regulate urine and feces.

It is common-sense to think that if your urine is leaking, you need to strengthen your pelvic.  

Okay, that may be possible, but it’s not always the case.  It can be a coordination and time issues as well.

Maybe your pelvic floor muscles are strong, but no one’s really taught them to, or perhaps they have lost their ability to be able to fire at the appropriate time.

And another possibility is, your pelvic floor muscles are too tight to function correctly.

Causes of Urinary Incontinence

Stress Urinary Incontinence is common during pregnancy and after childbirth.

It is because of the extra weight of a growing baby and giving birth muddle with your pelvic floor’s ability to manage pressure.

You have to know that incontinence is not limited only to new moms. It can affect women of all ages and athletic backgrounds such as gymnasts, weightlifters, dancers, and volley players.

According to Dr. C. Shante Cofield, DPT, OCS, founder of themovementmaestro.com, factors like improper breathing patterns, bad body mechanics, and poor postures can also contribute to incontinence.

For instance, athletes who stand and train with an overly arched lower back “put the floor, the diaphragm, and abs in a poor position”, she says.

It is basically trying to tell you that you can no longer control that intra-abdominal pressure well.

Even if you incorporate a full-body workout like yoga and Pilates, bad alignment cues can actually negatively impact your pelvic floor rather than strengthening your middle. 

For example, the cues of pulling the belly button up towards your rib cage and back toward your spine that some fitness teacher has in their tool bag to help you keep your back safe and strengthen your core.

Imagine a tube of toothpaste, if you hold it upside down with the hole at the bottom and squeeze the middle, the pressure goes either up or down, says Cofield.

“When it goes down then you have these embarrassing urinary incontinence issues.”

How to Seek Help to Stop Urine Leakage Naturally

Print and TV ads want you to think that it’s okay or normal to suffer from incontinence.  And it’s hard to miss the fact that UI is no longer a taboo- at least in the media.

They are featuring a happy middle-aged woman dancing and laughing while wearing body-hugging adult diapers.  

And if you browse across the web, you will find tons of sleek or lacy padded underwear, intended to allow the millions of women who suffer from urinary incontinence to feel sexy as well as secure.  

Does this mean normal?

Many advertisers lead a woman to believe that incontinence is inevitable after having a baby or two or after menopause.

Although incontinence is common in women it’s definitely not normal.

There are many good pelvic floor physical therapists like Alex Miller (a fitness instructor and women’s health specialist from Vancouver, Canada). 

She specializes in assessing and treating women with incontinence and as well as other issues like frequent urination and sexual pain.

Sadly, many women put off seeing a pelvic floor physical therapist simply because they have been told that their incontinency is nothing out of the ordinary.

You can visit Alex Miller’s Pelvic Floor Strong official website, where she trains her clients on how to heal incontinency naturally.

What Happens If You Don’t Do Anything For Your Incontinence?

You may be wondering, does Stress Urinary Incontinence goes away on its own!

Well, in some cases, postpartum women find that once their tissues heal and they stop breastfeeding, their symptoms may disappear slowly.

However, if you haven’t given birth or it’s been a month since you stopped nursing, any kind of urine leaking must be checked out.

If you ignore these symptoms, it is probable to continue and most likely to get worse with time.

For best results try to get an assessment with a pelvic professional; in just a few months, you could be hammering out those double under with no fear.