Upon finding out that you have incontinence, you might initially be worried, which is natural. Even though there are multiple different types of incontinence, most of them aren’t too difficult to handle. You can make many changes to improve symptoms and potentially even make the problem disappear. Here are some helpful tips that’ll help you overcome incontinence.
Cut Down on Certain Substances
One of the best ways to begin working on your incontinence is to cut back on certain substances you put into your body. One of the more common ones you should focus on is caffeine. Many people ingest caffeine regularly, so it can be a difficult drug to remove completely from your diet. However, caffeine can irritate your bladder, making the problem much worse.
Two other things you should cut back on or quit using, if possible, are alcohol and smoking. While neither of these is great for your general health, they both can worsen incontinence. Alcohol is a diuretic, which makes people urinate more in general. As for smoking, while the ingredients in cigarettes and other products don’t directly affect your bladder, they can make you cough more frequently, which will worsen your incontinence.
Work on Your Pelvic Floor
The next thing you should work on is strengthening the muscles that make up your pelvic floor. This muscle group is what controls your bladder and bowels. Most of the time, incontinence occurs due to a weakened pelvic floor. Doing Kegel exercises is a great way to build these muscles back up, which can drastically improve or eliminate your incontinence.
Try Losing Some Weight
Kegel exercises aren’t the only activities you should do to remedy your incontinence. You should also focus on losing excess weight. This is because being overweight can weaken your pelvic floor, the very thing you’re trying to improve. That means this tip for overcoming your incontinence goes hand-in-hand with the previous one.
Retrain Your Bladder
Our final suggestion for you is to try out a behavioral therapy process known as bladder training. Sometimes, incontinence can result from going to the bathroom too often. Going every time you feel a slight urge or going just in case can train your bladder to go more often than it should.
If this happens, you’ll need to try to retrain your bladder. You can do this by trying to plan your bathroom breaks. If you feel the urge to go before your next scheduled time, try waiting for five minutes to see if the urge goes away. This tactic won’t work all the time, but it’s worth a try because it can be quite effective.
