What Do You Need to Know About Incontinence?

Urinary incontinence is a health ailment and seen as a common and often embarrassing problem both in men and women. This disease begins with a loss of bladder control. Urinary incontinence occurs typically in persons who already have certain types of health conditions, which includes Parkinson's disease, an enlarged prostate, and diabetes, urinary tract infection. Apart from these diseases, a prostate surgery also adds to the possibility of urinary incontinence. Though it is a disturbing and uncomfortable health condition; with the help of appropriate treatment and practice, it is curable.

Understanding the Condition

In simple words, Incontinence can be referred as an inability of the bladder muscles and nerves to hold onto or release urine. Most of the time, a person suffering this ailment would feel an urge to go the bathroom. The problem is sometimes so severe that the person suffering from it can even leak urine while sneezing or coughing.

Types of Incontinence

There are five types of Incontinence

●       Stress Incontinence – In this kind of incontinence, the person suffering can observe urine leakage even while undertaking his/her daily work or activities. Any activity that puts pressure on the bladder can result in leaking of the urine. Laughing, lifting heavy objects, exercising, sneezing, coughing, et cetera are some examples of such activities.

●       Urge Incontinence – It can also be referred to as overactive bladder (OAB). In this type of incontinence, urine leakage is followed by a sudden and intense urge of going to the bathroom. If any person has to go to urinate for eight times a day or more than once at night, then the person may be suffering from this ailment.

●       Mixed Incontinence - This is the submissive form of the above two discussed incontinence, i.e., it would contain both the symptoms of the stress and the urge incontinences. This is most common in women.

●       Overflow Incontinence – In this type of incontinence, the person suffering feels an incapability of emptying the bladder completely and hence the urine leakage can be observed when the bladder gets full. This is mostly detected in men.

●       Functional Incontinence – this type of incontinence is seen in people already suffering from some of the acute medical conditions, which would hinder in their bathroom visit for urine. One such medical condition is arthritis, which keeps the person away from getting to the bathroom on time due to the pain it causes.

Conclusion

Most of the times the reasons and causes that should get checked for this ailments cure are related to simple acts. Loss of mobility due to some physical injury at an older age, any mental illness, some of the acute medical conditions, predominantly those which affects the brain or human nervous systems, such as Parkinson’s, Dementia, Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis and brain damage due to some accident, can cause incontinence too. Weak pelvic floor muscles, smoking and being overweight can also sometimes add on to this disease to be a chronic one.

Hence, it is advised to visit a doctor if any of the above symptoms occur in any one of your family members. With proper precautions on eating habits and adequate medicines, the problem of incontinence will be curable with ease.