Services
Incontinence
Urinary Incontinence
Urinary incontinence — the loss of bladder control — is a common and often embarrassing problem. The severity ranges from occasionally leaking urine when you cough or sneeze to having an urge to urinate that’s so sudden and strong you don’t get to a toilet in time.
Though it occurs more often as people get older, urinary incontinence isn’t an inevitable consequence of aging. If urinary incontinence affects your daily activities, don’t hesitate to give us a call. We have a special physical therapy program that treats urinary incontinence.
Types of Urinary Incontinence Include:
- Stress incontinence. Urine leaks when you exert pressure on your bladder by coughing, sneezing, laughing, exercising or lifting something heavy.
- Urge incontinence. You have a sudden, intense urge to urinate followed by an involuntary loss of urine. You may need to urinate often, including throughout the night. Urge incontinence may be caused by a minor condition, such as infection, or a more severe condition such as a neurological disorder or diabetes.
- Overflow incontinence. You experience frequent or constant dribbling of urine due to a bladder that doesn’t empty completely.
- Mixed incontinence. You experience more than one type of urinary incontinence — most often this refers to a combination of stress incontinence and urge incontinence.
When to see a physical therapist:
Physical therapy specially designed to address the pelvic floor muscles can totally relieve incontinence. So that’s the first place you should start. Other therapies are not as effective and have undesirable side-effects, like medications and surgery.
At Superior, our pelvic floor therapists take additional training and are experts in understanding how the muscles, ligaments and nerves of the pelvic floor support and activate the bladder and other organs inside the pelvis.
Call and schedule an appointment with one of our Doctors of Physical Therapy if incontinence is:
- Causing you to restrict your activities and limit your social interactions
- Negatively impacting your quality of life
- Making you resort to pads or diapers to go out in public
- Making you worry you have a more serious underlying condition
Causes
Urinary Incontinence most commonly is caused by weakness in the pelvic floor muscles that contract and relax around the urethra and anus, which allow you control over your bowel and bladder.
Sometimes an injury or the natural changes that occur during pregnancy can cause weakness in the pelvic floor. Most often for older people, we become incontinent because of a lack of the right kinds of movement or exercise.
If you think about children, it’s no coincidence that they become potty trained exactly at the time they really start running, jumping and skipping. This is because they are strengthening their pelvic floor.
Adults can do the same, although the movements and exercises our therapists use are more suited to the activities we perform, or the limitations we have because of age.
Anyone can regain bladder (and bowel) control!.
Treatment for Urinary Incontinence
The great news is… there is highly effective treatment to relieve incontinence. Functional physical therapy specifically designed to re-activate the pelvic floor muscles, ligaments and nerves can totally relieve symptoms.
The Superior Method for Pelvic Floor Muscle Training
The method we prescribe to eliminate incontinence goes far beyond the traditional Kegel exercises that most providers recommend. We apply the principles of chain reaction biomechanics to the pelvic floor muscles. This method recognizes that pelvic floor muscles are activated through movement of the body in the areas above and below the pelvis. Simply put this means your ability to effectively move your trunk and hips determines the performance of your pelvic floor. By getting your whole body to move better, we are able to improve the strength of your pelvic floor and eliminate the symptoms of incontinence.
The Superior Method also involves educating you on your condition and providing you a video program to use at home with our patented MovementRx System. You will have a video library of everything to do on your own to keep the incontinence symptoms away forever.
We also provide a complimentary online course called MyCoreFloor to supplement your in-person treatments. You can learn more about this online course at www.NoMorePads.com.