Wondering why you leak urine when you laugh, run, or sneeze?
Lately, lots of you have been asking about this, so I thought I’d revisit an excerpt from my blog “3 Embarrassing Symptoms of Perimenopause and Menopause.” It covers why bladder leaks can happen and offers practical tips to help keep them under control.
Urinary incontinence during perimenopause and menopause - what causes it & what can help
This is basically when you unconsciously pass urine, maybe when you run or when you laugh or when you do sports or anything where you're moving more than normal. It could also be that you're fine one minute, and the next minute you're absolutely desperate to go to the toilet, and you start to leak before you can get to the toilet.
There are two main factors that can cause this. One is just age itself. As we get older, the bladder valve, which we can normally control, becomes weaker. So, we're less in control of our bladder generally, and any little bit of extra pressure can just make us leak a little urine.
The second reason is that as our hormones start to fall, and especially oestrogen, our bladder can be impacted. Lower oestrogen levels cause a weakening effect on the bladder generally, so again, we can't control our bladder as much as we used to do before.
Another thing that can happen is something called a prolapse. We've got pelvic girdle muscles, which are muscles that are slung between each hip, and they hold up (a bit like a sling or a hammock) the bladder, the bowel, and the womb. But what happens as we get older is that these muscles become weaker so that the organs in this pelvic area can slide or shift a bit. The bladder can end up shifting position, getting squashed by the bowel or the womb. And that makes it much harder to keep control of bladder function.
If you're getting a dragging feeling in this area, then it's really important to get this checked out by your doctor. As I said before, we don't like to talk about these embarrassing things with the doctor, but this is important because the bladder can shift. And if your pelvic girdle muscles weaken too much, it can impact the vagina. So, if you have any kind of discomfort when you're sitting, any kind of dragging feeling, then it's really important to get this checked for a prolapse.
The other thing it could be is just dehydration. When we get dehydrated, the bladder can get irritated because the urine gets very acidic and very concentrated. So, we have this situation where we're leaking. We may need to go to the toilet more when we don't want to. So, it seems logical to think that if we don't drink so much, we won't go to the toilet so much. But exactly the opposite happens. It's therefore really important with urinary incontinence that you make sure that you're drinking plenty of water during the day as well.
The other thing that can help is Pilates. This is one of the very few disciplines that will help strengthen the bladder. So, if you can find an experienced practitioner in your area, they can teach you really specific exercises to do. I was told by a really experienced Pilates instructor many years ago that doing things online, such as going to YouTube to find instruction videos, is not a good idea. You can end up doing the exercises wrong because you're not quite sure what you're supposed to do. So, this is one instance where I recommend it that you go and see an experienced instructor. They can show you very specific exercises to do. I know that Pilates for women and Pilates for pelvic health are becoming much more popular now.
And for those of you who are just approaching perimenopause or menopause, preventative medicine is better than waiting until something happens. The older you get, the more common weak bladders become, so doing preventative work, and learning how to do these exercises before things get too bad, is worth its weight in gold.
Lots of water as well, as I mentioned above. Just make sure that you keep up with that.
