Is Your Women’s Urinary Incontinence Temporary?

by GeneralUrinary IncontinenceWomen's Healthcare

Women’s urinary incontinence is more common than you may think. Studies indicate that at least 25% of women over age 25 have experienced urine leakage at least once. That’s a lot of women!

Let’s say that you’ve just experienced your first (or second) episode of urinary leakage. At that point, you might start to wonder whether the leakage episode was just a random and temporary event, or if urinary leakage is going to become a regular part of your life. Good question. After all, you can easily ignore an isolated incident of urine leakage–after all, who among us hasn’t tried to “hold our water” while we finish some important task? On the other hand, if urinary incontinence is here to stay in your life, then you need to take your condition much more seriously. The key is to discover whether your urinary incontinence is temporary or persistent.

Causes of Temporary Urinary Incontinence
There are multiple causes of temporary urinary incontinence, all of which are related to lifestyle habits. Read through the following list and see if any of these lifestyle habits are present in your life, and may be causing your urinary incontinence:

Bladder Irritants
Many foods and beverages can irritate your bladder. These include coffee and tea (with or without caffeine), caffeinated beverages, carbonated beverages, spicy foods, sugary foods and beverages, acidic foods (such as citrus foods), and artificial sweeteners.

Drinking Too Little or Too Much Water
Drinking a lot of water in a short period of time can cause your bladder to go into overdrive. At the same time, drinking too little water can cause your urine to become acidic, irritating the bladder and causing temporary urinary incontinence. To discover the appropriate amount of water for your body weight, read this article.

Alcohol
Like caffeinated beverages, alcohol acts as a diuretic, which can cause you to feel like you need to urinate urgently and frequently. To find out if alcohol could be causing your urinary incontinence on a temporary basis, significantly reduce or eliminate your intake of alcohol for a week or two. If you don’t have any leakage accidents during that time, alcohol could be one of your triggers for temporary urinary incontinence.

Medications
Some medications are also diuretics, just like alcohol or caffeinated beverages. Likely culprits include heart medications, sedatives, muscle relaxants, and blood pressure drugs. Check with your healthcare provider about whether any of your medications (both prescription and over-the-counter) might be causing your temporary urinary incontinence.

Do any of these lifestyle habits ring a bell for you? If so, you may only be experiencing temporary urinary incontinence. This is good news because this means that you can resolve your urinary leakage by simply eliminating any lifestyle habits that are causing your leakage!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to check out our book, leave a comment, contact us, download our free ebook, or interact with us on Twitter and Facebook.

 

Diet Modification for Women’s Urinary Incontinence, Part III – What Happens When You “Whoops”?

by General Urinary IncontinenceResources and AppsUrinary IncontinenceWomen's Healthcare

This blog is part 8 of an 11 article series of 11 New Year’s resolutions that actually work and WILL improve your pelvic health. Get the full list of all 11 New Year’s resolutions HERE.

For some women, diet modification alone is enough to relieve their symptoms of urinary urgency and frequency. For other women, this conservative therapy works best when combined with other lifestyle changes, such as weight loss and bladder retraining. Regardless, most women who modify their diets to avoid bladder irritants, such as caffeine and acidic foods, do find some relief from incontinence symptoms such urinary urgency, frequency, and leakage.

Diet Modification: What Happens When You “Whoops”?
The woman who has never experienced a “whoops” while on a diet is a rare woman indeed! After all, what woman isn’t occasionally tempted by that towering piece of chocolate cake or that steaming cup of espresso? The result? A “whoops” in the diet. For a woman who doesn’t suffer from urinary incontinence, such a slip is no big deal. An extra workout on the treadmill or more careful monitoring of the diet will most likely take care of any side effects from that diet slip.

But for the woman who does have urinary urgency or leakage as a result of eating or drinking bladder irritants, such a dietary slip can create a bigger problem. In fact, ingesting bladder irritants can have immediate and unwanted effects … namely, a bladder leakage accident! So what do you do if you find that you have accidentally fallen prey to a tasty treat and irritated your bladder? You use this emergency recipe to reduce urine acidity: a bicarbonate slush.

What is a Bicarbonate Slush?
Don’t let the word “bicarbonate” scare you–it is just a fancy name for baking soda, that powdery white stuff that many of us keep in our refrigerators. In fact, baking soda does pretty much the same job in the refrigerator as it does for you when you have eaten something acidic that irritates your bladder. Baking soda, being alkaline (having a pH higher than seven), tends to neutralize acidic substances. In the refrigerator, baking soda neutralizes the smells caused mostly by acidic foods. When you drink a bicarbonate slush, made by mixing baking soda and water, the baking soda neutralizes the offending acidic food you just ate.

To make a bicarbonate slush, simply mix one tablespoon of baking soda with 16 ounces (or two cups) of pure water. Drink the slush right away, and immediately drink eight more ounces (one cup) of additional water. You should begin to feel your urinary urgency and other symptoms subside fairly quickly. Do not use this slush without first checking with your doctor if you have high blood pressure or are prone to retaining salt.

The good news about the bicarbonate slush is that it is simple to make. Even if you are at a party when you experience a dietary slip, your host  most likely has baking soda on hand. Just whip up a slushy cocktail, chug it down, and consider yourself relieved!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to check out our book, leave a comment, contact us, download our free ebook, or interact with us on Twitter and Facebook.

 

Diet Modification for Women’s Urinary Incontinence – Avoiding Bladder Irritants

by General Urinary IncontinenceMixed Urinary IncontinenceUrge Urinary IncontinenceUrinary Incontinence

This blog is part 6 of an 11 article series of 11 New Year’s resolutions that actually work and WILL improve your pelvic health. Get the full list of all 11 New Year’s resolutions HERE.

One popular adage says, “You’ve got egg on your face” … if you’ve got women’s urinary incontinence, the saying should probably say, “You’ve got food in your underwear!” Why? Because certain food and beverages can be bladder irritants, worsening symptoms like urinary leakage, frequency, and urge. One of the simplest lifestyle changes that women with urinary incontinence can make is to modify their diets to avoid bladder irritants.

What Are Bladder Irritants?
Bladder irritants are any foods or beverages that tend to make the urine more acidic, irritating areas of the bladder and urethra that are already inflamed. Mostly, bladder irritants include foods and beverages that:

  • are acidic
  • contain caffeine
  • have alcohol
  • contain tyrosine, tyramine, tryptophan, aspirate, and phenylalanine
  • you are allergic to

Avoiding these types of food and beverages can improve symptoms of urinary incontinence, especially with urinary urgency and frequency.

What To Do If You Cannot Avoid Bladder Irritants
While you can make every effort to avoid bladder irritants in your diet, there will be certain times when you simply cannot avoid these foods or beverages. For instance, suppose you find yourself at a dinner party where almost every item served is a bladder irritant. What’s a woman with urinary incontinence to do? Luckily, there are several strategies that can help you in these situations.

1. Use Prelief
Prelief is an over-the-counter medication that removes acid from the foods and beverages. Simply supplement meals that are acidic in nature with Prelief to avoid irritating your bladder.

2. Use a Coffee Substitute
If you absolutely must have your morning cup of joe to start your day, try a coffee substitute like Kava. Another option Postum, which is a low-acid instant drink similar to coffee. Caffeine-free herbal teas are another great way to start your morning.

3. Drink Plenty of Water
If you happen to eat or drink something that suddenly increases your urinary urges or frequency, drink plenty of water. The water will dilute the effect of the bladder irritants and reduce urine acidity.

Experimenting with Diet Modification
Once you remove all the offending foods and beverages from your diet, you will probably find that your symptoms of urinary urgency and frequency improve. This usually occurs within a few weeks of changing your diet. Once your symptoms improve, you can experiment by adding single foods or beverages back into your diet, noting which ones irritate your bladder and which do not.

Some people find immediate relief from this kind of diet modification, while others find this type of program too difficult to follow over a long period of time. Regardless, diet modification is a proven conservative therapy for women’s urinary incontinence, especially those with urge or mixed incontinence.
If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to check out our book, leave a comment, contact us, download our free ebook, or interact with us on Twitter and Facebook.

 

How Much Water Should You Drink if You Have Women’s Urinary Incontinence?

by GeneralGeneral Urinary IncontinencePelvic Floor WeaknessWomen's Healthcare

This blog is part 5 of an 11 article series of 11 New Year’s resolutions that actually work and WILL improve your pelvic health. Get the full list of all 11 New Year’s resolutions HERE.

Good question. The answer? It depends …

Many women with urinary incontinence think that they can decrease urinary leakage by severely cutting back on the amount of water they drink. Sadly, this doesn’t work. In fact, drastically reducing water intake can actually worsen symptoms of urinary incontinence. Drinking too little water leads to dehydration, which can worsen urinary incontinence symptoms for two reasons:

  1. lack of fluid concentrates the urine–this can irritate the bladder
  2. concentrated urine has a stronger odor, making leakage accidents more noticeable

So how much water should you drink to avoid worsening your symptoms? First, don’t operate under the misconception that drinking way less water will improve your urinary incontinence symptoms. Second, avoid drinking excessive amounts of water for the simple reason that “what goes in must come out.” If you already suffer from urinary incontinence, drinking too much water increases your chances of having a urinary leakage accident. Plus, you’ll find yourself perpetually in the bathroom!

How Much Water Should You Drink?
Many women with urinary incontinence are stuck between a rock and hard a place when it comes to the topic of water intake. They have to drink enough water to stay hydrated, yet they also have to avoid drinking too much water. What’s a woman to do?

The truth of the matter is that the “right” amount of water is going to be different for each woman. Most women with urinary incontinence find that their symptoms remain the same if they drink between six and eight cups of water daily. This amount of water keeps them hydrated while preventing too many trips to the bathroom.

If you are either underweight or overweight, you may need to adjust the amount of water you drink accordingly. A good rule of thumb is to drink water in ounces equal to half of your body weight. For instance, if you weigh 110 pounds, drink 55 ounces of water daily.

Another good rule of thumb is to drink enough water so that your urine is light yellow to clear. When it comes to how much water you should drink to avoid irritating your bladder, let the color of your urine be an indicator.

Try Timed Fluid Intake to Get Your Full Day’s Supply of Water
Some women drink the “right” amount of water for their body weight, but still find that their urinary incontinence symptoms are aggravated by their water intake. Timed fluid intake can help. Timed fluid intake simply means that you drink the majority of your water in the morning, and then gradually scale down your intake until about 6 pm. Stop drinking all fluids past 6 pm. This will prevent nocturia, or the urge to get up and urinate during the night, as well as leakage accidents at night. If you feel thirsty later in the day or at night, use sugar-free candies to keep your mouth moist.

It’s Not How Much But What You Drink That Matters
Women with urinary incontinence worry about the amount of water they should drink daily. But these same women often fail to think about what they drink besides water. While water hydrates the body and is actually healthy when taken in the right amounts, other fluids can worsen symptoms of urinary incontinence. Women with urinary leakage should avoid:

  • caffeine: stimulates and irritates the bladder, acts as a diuretic
  • alcohol: causes dehydration, reduces neurological control over the bladder
  • carbonated beverages: irritates the bladder, often also contains caffeine

Hopefully this article has helped you figure out how much water you should drink for you specific situation, as well as which fluids to avoid. In addition, drinking water at the right time of day can have a big impact on the severity of your urinary incontinence symptoms!

If you enjoyed this post, we invite you to check out our book, leave a comment, contact us, download our free ebook, or interact with us on Twitter and Facebook.