What Is Incontinence?
Incontinence isn’t a condition that affects just the elderly. Incontinence is a condition where you pass small amounts of urine when you don’t mean to, and anyone can be affected by it.
There are different forms of this condition, but each can make you feel embarrassed and frustrated by the inconvenience of having incontinence. The first type of incontinence is known as stress incontinence.
This isn’t talking about emotional stress but rather a pressure that’s put on your bladder. Many pregnant women experience a more frequent need to urinate because of the pressure of the baby on the bladder.
This same pressure in pregnant women can lead to episodes of incontinence. This kind of incontinence can be temporary incontinence and most will go away once the baby is born.
Physical activities that strain the abdomen can cause urine to leak. So can laughing because your abdominal muscles are putting pressure on the bladder. Coughing or sudden sneezing are also forms of stress incontinence.
Functional incontinence is a type of incontinence caused by health impairments such as diseases that affect muscle control and it can also be an issue in people with mental health problems.
People with this type of incontinence may be unable to hold the urine at all or may not understand when it’s time to go to the bathroom so they end up with leakage before they make it to the bathroom.
Urge incontinence is a form of incontinence that happens when the bladder sends a sudden signal to go to the bathroom and patients with this condition lose urine to due to a contraction in the bladder.
Overflow incontinence is incontinence that has to do with improper emptying of the bladder. Because you don’t empty all the way, you feel like you have to go back to the bathroom even if you just used it. When the bladder gets full, then leakage accidents happen.
Occasionally, there are cases of mixed incontinence, which means having two different kinds of incontinence at the same time. What sex you are can also be a factor in incontinence. Though men also deal with this issue, women are more prone to incontinence than men because of the strain put on the body through pregnancy and childbirth.
But even without ever having been pregnant or given birth, incontinence is worse in women because of urinary tract infections, which many women experience. Women are also the ones who tend to get mixed incontinence more often than men do.
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