Pelvic Health Tip of the Week: Troubleshooting Bladder Leaks During Exercise
Have you dealt with bladder leaks during exercise? The reality is that this problem is way more common than you realize. Bladder leakage impacts nearly 1 in 2-3 women and is a huge problem for many men undergoing prostate cancer treatment (especially after prostatectomies!). So, if you're experiencing bladder leaks, here are a few strategies that can help:
1) Identify the type of leakage you're experiencing: If you are leaking with a strong bladder urge, this is known as urge incontinence. I sometimes will see this experienced by people heading out to exercise on a particularly cold day, or those who have particular urge triggers related to exercise. If your leakage occurs with a movement (ie, with running, lifting, squatting, jumping), it is most likely what is known as stress incontinence. Stress incontinence occurs when an increase in intraabdominal pressure leads to pressure on the bladder that exceeds the pressure at the outlet. This can be due to weakness in the muscles or a loss of support around the bladder and urethra.
2) Identify when the leakage occurs: Now, you get to play detective. Explore when the leakage is happening. Is it consistently during your movement (ie, do you notice leaking multiple times while you are on a run?) or does it occur during very particular tasks (ie, only during ab exercises, or jumping rope, etc).
3) If possible, break the movement down and try a new strategy. If you are leaking with increases in pressure (stress incontinence), attempting a new strategy could help. This could look like changing your breathing pattern, slowing down the movement or speeding up the movement, or possibly, making the movement less difficult (ie, decreasing the range of your sit up, or unloading your squat). If that stops the leakage, stay there, then gradually add more load to the movement.
4) Connect with your pelvic floor muscles. If you haven't worked with a pelvic floor PT it can be helpful to work with one to help you connect with your pelvic floor muscles, break down your movements, and help you determine why your leakage is happening. Sometimes, strengthening the pelvic floor muscles can be a key factor to improving support around the urethra. Other times, we need to work on other things to help the body better utilize the automatic functions of the pelvic floor. Still other times, the pelvic floor muscles need to be able to lengthen to function optimally.
Let me know if this helps you! And if you need a little more one-on-one guidance, give us a call!
Get In Touch With Dr. Jessica Reale
Southern Pelvic Health offers services in Atlanta as well as remote virtual consultations.