Women Series 1 - "I'm still young.. but why do I keep "Leaking"? [by Physio Alya]

Have you ever encountered a situation where you find yourself “accidentally” wet your panties after sneezing? Or you have any family members that frequently go to the toilet even though they haven’t drunk much?

Again, this topic here I'll be talking about here is on Urinary Incontinence, something that’s NOT talked enough in our everyday life - as people tend to get embarrassed to talk about it. But in actual fact, this happens more frequently than you think.

The reason why I decided to write this article up is so that more people can get educated about this “leaking” and what they can do about it. So.. if you had any of that experience or almost similar, you are in the right place today!

So.. A quick story before I hop onto the content, years ago.. I still remember meeting a patient of mine who make her leaking problem known to me.. that she had to put on ‘adult diapers’ every time she went out. No one in the family members knew because this topic tend to get a bit more "private" and simply, certain people is just more reserved than the others.

Back to the story, putting on adult diapers really made it uncomfortable for her, as she had to change it very frequently, outside home or even carrying out daily tasks like doing prayers. I happened to work with her for 3 months to get her to see some significant changes on her "leakage" as she started to use less of diapers each day. Happy to say that.. due to this improvements, we get to see a rise in her confidence, she also start to become more comfortable going on doing her daily activity.
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With that being said, especially for those of you out there who think there is no way you can improve your "leaking" situation.. THERE IS A WAY TO MANAGE IT! Please read on the importance and also understand that not giving this the right attention may potentially lead to long term problem or other complications. So are you ready? Buckle up!

​First thing first, you need to know that this ‘leaking’ problem can occur to anyone regardless you are young or old. What you need to know is how does this leaking occur?

Let’s talk about pelvic floor muscle (PVM) first. Everyone has a PVM, male and female. It’s just a matter if your PVM is strong or not. PVM functions to support your reproductive organs (ie. Uterus) and also to control the bladder and bowel. So, if you are unable to control your urine, then it means you have a weakness of PVM and we call it as URINARY INCONTINENCE. 

​There are three types of incontinence according to your condition. Now let’s look into them in simpler words so that you can understand better about urinary incontinence.

1. Stress Incontinence
The name itself gives the idea that whatever stresses that are being put around your pelvic floor muscle (PVM) will lead to incontinence due to overpressure on it. Examples of stress are like coughing, sneezing, laughing or even during pregnancy. 

These activities will eventually give pressure towards your abdomen and can further put pressure on PVM. This can also happen during pregnancy obviously because of the increased abdominal pressure from the fetus. Therefore, all these over-pressure received by PVM will make it weaker and lose the capability to control the bladder.

2. Urge Incontinence
This type of incontinence is a sudden and strong urge to urinate even before you reach the toilet. It is also called an overactive bladder or instability of the bladder. In a normal functioning bladder, the  bladder muscle (detrusor) will remain relaxed if the bladder is filled up. However, if you have urges incontinence, the muscles contract too early even if they are not full. This will make you frequently go to the toilet or perhaps even leak out before you reach there.

3. Overflow Incontinence
This incontinence occurs if you are unable to control and completely empty the bladder and you will leak out unexpectedly, which is the overflow. Sometimes you may not even sense that the bladder is full, you will only notice it if you wet your pants or the bed at night. Usually this will cause embarrassment and discomfort to those suffering with this condition. And not only that, urinary tract infections (UTI) may even occur because of the urine left in the bladder.

I hope by now, you at least have some idea already (if any), what type of incontinence you are having. If you're keen to know, "What's next", "What can you do about it?" I’ll answer that on our next article. Do stay tuned!