The bladder workout: Tame Overactive Bladder without Surgery
If you experience a sudden urge to urinate, even when your bladder isn't full, you might be suffering from Overactive bladder. Also known as urge incontinence, this feeling can be a nuisance. But when the urge can't be controlled and it results in incontinence, quality of life is significantly impacted. In younger women, it might initially appear to be a symptom of a urinary tract infection.
Fortunately, bladder training is a strategy that can go a long way toward helping with urinary incontinence. Bladder training involves learning to urinate on a schedule (called timed voiding) and doing pelvic muscle exercises.
Here's a step-by-step guide to bladder-training technique:
Keep a diary. For a day or two, keep track of the times you urinate or leak urine during the day.
Calculate. On average, what is the gap between visits to the bathroom during the day?
Choose an interval. Based on your typical interval between needing to urinate, set your starting interval for training so that it's 15 minutes longer. For example, if you usually make it for 1 hour before you need to use the bathroom, make your starting interval 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Hold back. On your training day, empty your bladder in the morning and don’t go again until your target time. If the time comes before you feel the need, go anyway. If you feel the urge first, remember that your bladder isn’t full, and use any methods to hold off going. Try pelvic floor exercises (also called Kegels), or simply try to wait another 5 minutes before walking slowly to the bathroom.
Increase your interval. Once you are successful with your initial interval, increase it by another 15 minutes. Over several weeks, you will find you are able to wait much longer and that you feel the urge less often. After 4-8 weeks, if you think you have found some improvement, do another diary. Compare your initial diary to your second diary to note the improvements in your intervals and the amount of urine you void. Reviewing and comparing actually helps reinforce the bladder training process.
