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!
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