Strengthening Weak Bladder With Lifestyle Changes Exercises Herbal Remedies Medications And Medical Treatments
There is a long list that tells how to strengthen weak bladder. You need to follow the one that works best for you. You need to choose your treatment options depending on the kind of incontinence you suffer from. But, before getting any treatment you need to know that this condition can be managed in an easy manner and there is nothing to worry about it.
Let us know how to strengthen weak bladder in the following section.
Limit Caffeine And Alcohol
Caffeine and alcohol have a diuretic effect on your body. That means they increase the amount of urine you produce. If youre having trouble controlling your bladder, consuming caffeinated beverages may be contributing to the problem.
To help manage your symptoms, consider limiting caffeine and alcohol, or avoiding them altogether. Coffee, tea, soda, chocolate, and certain medications are common sources of caffeine.
How To Strengthen A Weak Bladder With Kegel Exercises
If youre an exercise enthusiast, you probably already know that the best exercise routines focus on both slow-twitch and fast-twitch muscle fibers. Slow-twitch muscles use energy slowly and create endurance, while fast-twitch muscles provide short, powerful bursts of energy.
Slow-twitch pelvic floor muscles help you hold your bladder, so you dont have to head to the bathroom as frequently. Fast-twitch pelvic floor muscles protect against bladder leaks, like those that happen when you lift something heavy or cough.
A thorough Kegel exercise routine includes daily workouts for both your slow-twitch and fast-twitch pelvic floor muscles.
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How Do I Find My Pelvic Floor Muscles
In order to help strengthen you pelvic floor muscles, it is important that you take time to make sure you are exercising the right muscles. It may take you several tries to find your pelvic muscles. So, take your time.
There are several ways that you can find your pelvic floor muscles. One way is to:
Another way to find your pelvic floor muscles is to:
The muscles you use to stop your urine flow are your pelvic floor muscles. These are the muscles you want to strengthen before and after your prostate cancer treatment.
How To Find The Right Muscles
A Kegel exercise is like pretending you have to urinate and then holding it. You relax and tighten the muscles that control urine flow. It is important to find the right muscles to tighten.
If you still are not sure you are tightening the right muscles:
- Imagine that you are trying to keep yourself from passing gas.
- Men: Insert a finger into your rectum. Tighten the muscles as if you are holding in your urine, then let go. You should feel the muscles tighten and move up and down.
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Will My Urine Leakage Stop If I Do The Kegel Exercises
Most men gain control of their urine leakage within nine to 12 months after their surgery. Studies with men show that Kegel exercises help lessen urine leakage. However, each mans healing time is different.
Do not become discouraged if you have urine leakage. If you do your Kegel exercises on a daily basis, you can expect to see some results. You may have a great improvement or you may help keep your urine leakage from getting worse. You will need to continue doing your Kegel exercises each day so that your pelvic floor muscles stay strong.
If you have any questions or concerns about urine leakage , how to do a Kegel exercise, or if you would like to know about other things that may help with urine leakage, please talk to your doctor or your healthcare team.
Take Home The Advice:
So, above we talked about some of the ways to strengthen weak bladder. If you are suffering from a similar condition, you can try experimenting on any of the above mentioned treatment ways and look what suits best for you. However, it is always a strict advice to consult your doctor before adopting any treatment for your condition.
Let your doctor examine your condition and treat it expertly.
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Are Kegels Only For People With Pelvic Problems Or Can Anyone Do Them
Theyre not harmful to anyone. Its like any muscle in our body. We go to a gym to address muscles in our arms and legs, but we neglect the pelvic floor muscles. Keeping up with pelvic floor health is good. During pregnancy, women can benefit from them if they do them correctly. A lot of women do them wrong and that can exacerbate certain problems.
So How Exactly Does This Strengthen Pelvic Floor Muscles
A regular exercising routine is essential to maintaining strong, well-balanced pelvic floor muscles.
Also, those muscles must be used on a regular basis in order to strengthen them.
When you walk, all of your abdominal and pelvic area muscles are engaged as they work together to help you move.
This is actually how the study came about as it focuses on whether or not walking can offer benefits to muscles that are not used on a regular basis.
It appears that walking, even without any direct correlation to pelvic floor muscles, does have positive effects on the abdominal area as it can help with overall muscle tone.
Its important to note though that this doesnt mean if you walk regularly your pelvic floor will become stronger no matter what.
To give your pelvic muscles the best chances of becoming stronger, they must also be used on a regular basis.
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What Will I Learn By Reading This
When you have prostate cancer surgery or radiation therapy the muscles that help you control your urine flow may be weakened. When this happens you may have incontinence. Incontinence is when you leak or pass urine when you do not want to. This is a very common side effect or unwanted change of prostate cancer treatment. The good news is that there is a simple exercise, called a Kegel exercise, you can do to help strengthen your muscles. This exercise will help you have more control over your urine flow after your prostate cancer treatment. You will learn:
- What a Kegel exercise is
- Why you should do Kegel exercises
- How to find your pelvic floor muscles
- How often you should do your Kegel exercises
It is important for you to think about and plan how you will take care of yourself before and after your prostate cancer treatment so that you can keep doing as many of your normal activities as possible.
Exercises Your Leaky Bladder Wants You To Do
There are exercises for your butt, your legs, your arms, your spare tire, even your ever-texting achy thumbs. So considering the bladder itself is a muscleand it’s surrounded by other musclesit makes sense that you can whip that puppy into shape, too.
Of course, unless you already have the occasional leakage due to aging, genetics, or childbirth, you might not focus much exercise attention on your bladder. But strengthening those down-there muscles can stop so-called stress incontinence in its tracks, says Candace Howe, MD, a board-certified ob-gyn in private practice in Newport Beach, California. “Who wants to undergo surgery?” Howe says. “I’m a surgeon, and I tell my patients I wouldn’t want to! If we can fix incontinence with exercise, that’s preferable.”
When Suzanne Andrews, host of Functional Fitness, was experiencing urinary incontinence after the birth of her son, her doctor told her to consider surgery. As an occupational therapy clinician, Suzanne was seeing patients with the same symptoms and realized her exercise background could help. She created the 30 Day Bladder Fix, a pelvic floor strengthening DVD that combines seated and lying-down exercises to help control incontinence. “I remember the day I realized I didn’t have it anymore,” Andrews says. “I sneezed and nothing came out!”
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How To Do Kegel Exercises
Once you know what the movement feels like, do Kegel exercises 3 times a day:
- Make sure your bladder is empty, then sit or lie down.
- Tighten your pelvic floor muscles. Hold tight and count 3 to 5 seconds.
- Relax the muscles and count 3 to 5 seconds.
- Repeat 10 times, 3 times a day .
Breathe deeply and relax your body when you are doing these exercises. Make sure you are not tightening your stomach, thigh, buttock, or chest muscles.
After 4 to 6 weeks, you should feel better and have fewer symptoms. Keep doing the exercises, but do not increase how many you do. Overdoing it can lead to straining when you urinate or move your bowels.
Some notes of caution:
- Once you learn how to do them, do not practice Kegel exercises at the same time you are urinating more than twice a month. Doing the exercises while you are urinating can weaken your pelvic floor muscles over time or cause damage to bladder and kidneys.
- In women, doing Kegel exercises incorrectly or with too much force may cause vaginal muscles to tighten too much. This can cause pain during sexual intercourse.
- Incontinence will return if you stop doing these exercises. Once you start doing them, you may need to do them for the rest of your life.
- It may take several months for your incontinence to lessen once you start doing these exercises.
Tips To Keep Your Bladder Healthy
People rarely talk about bladder health, but everyone is affected by it. Located in the lower abdomen, the bladder is a hollow organ, much like a balloon, that stores urine. Urine contains waste and extra fluid left over after the body takes what it needs from what we eat and drink. Each day, adults pass about a quart and a half of urine through the bladder and out of the body.
As people get older, the bladder changes. The elastic bladder tissue may toughen and become less stretchy. A less flexible bladder cannot hold as much urine as before and might make you go to the bathroom more often. The bladder wall and pelvic floor muscles may weaken, making it harder to empty the bladder fully and causing urine to leak.
While you cant control everything that affects your bladder, here are 15 steps you can take to keep it as healthy as possible:
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What Types Of Things Does Uchicago Medicines Center For Pelvic Health Do That Make It Stand Out From Other Hospitals
Were lucky that our team of specialists at the Center for Pelvic Health is truly a multispecialty group. So, we are able to manage a very wide spectrum of conditions. We can provide care for any condition related to the pelvic floor. We have a very strong colorectal team, which is focused on pelvic floor dysfunction. All the members of the center are very dedicated and cherish very collaborative relationships. Thats really our strength. We include urogynecologists, urologists, colorectal surgeons, pelvic floor physical therapists, pain specialists, minimally invasive gynecological surgeons, radiologists and more.
Strengthen Your Pelvic Floor Muscles
Once you locate your pelvic floor muscles you are ready to begin. The exercise involves squeezing then relaxing your pelvic floor muscles. Squeeze the muscles for five seconds and then relax the muscles for five seconds. Be sure to take the time to relax between squeezes so that your muscles can rest before squeezing again. Each squeeze and relax counts as one repetition.
Each set of exercises should include three different positions: 10 repetitions lying down, 10 sitting, and 10 standing. Do one set in the morning and one set at night .
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What Medications Can I Use For Overactive Bladder
Your doctor may suggest trying behavioral techniques before having you use a medication to treat overactive bladder. However, medications can work very well to return normal function to the bladder. Ask your doctor about the risks and benefits of using the following commonly prescribed medications:
Anticholinergic medications
These medications control muscle spasms in the bladder:
- Oxybutynin , oxybutynin XL , oxybutynin TDDS .
The Relationship Between Bladder Muscles And Oab
Overactive bladder is a common issue for adults, especially as they age. According to the Urology Care Foundation, about 30% of men and 40% of women have symptoms of an overactive bladder.
Different factors contribute to an overactive bladder, including nerve signals between the brain and the bladder. There is also a relationship between the bladder muscles and urinary urgency and leakage.
Normally when you have to urinate, your brain sends a signal to the bladder. The bladder muscles squeeze, the urethra opens and urine flows out of the bladder. When the bladder is not full, the muscles relax.
Overactive bladder can develop for a variety of reasons, such as nerve damage that affects the signals between the bladder muscles and the brain. It can also occur if the muscles in your bladder are too active. This is why knowing how to relax your bladder muscles is important.
The overactive muscles make you feel urinary urgency. Also, the muscles that support your bladder may be weak, which contributes to urinary leakage.
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Do Daily Pelvic Floor Exercises
The pelvic floor muscles are responsible for supporting the bladder, and they help control the flow of urine through the urethra. When they become weakened or damaged, it can cause stress incontinence.
Performing pelvic floor exercises including Kegels, squats, and the bridge can help strengthen the muscles around and within the bladder to prevent urinary incontinence.
According to the results of two clinical trials , women who participate in pelvic floor muscle training are twice as likely to see an improvement in their urinary incontinence than those receiving symptomatic care alone. They are also five times more likely to have their symptoms completely resolve.
Those who have had recent surgery, have given birth recently, or have other health concerns should talk with a doctor before beginning any exercise regimen.
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How Many Should I Do Per Day
Performing with an empty bladder, your first goal should be to tighten your pelvic floor muscles for 5 seconds. Then relax them for 5 seconds. Try to do 5 reps on your first day. As you gain confidence from your new routine, aim for 10 seconds at a time, relaxing for 10 seconds between contractions.
As you gain strength, you can work up to 3 sessions of 10 full Kegels per day.
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Signs Of Pelvic Floor Strength Improvement
Improving your pelvic floor strength takes time. Dont be discouraged if you are not able to control your bladder as soon as you would like, but rather look for these signs as proof that your pelvic floor muscle exercises are working and that you are on your way to better bladder health:
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Longer time between bathroom visits
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Fewer accidents
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Ability to hold the contractions longer, or to do more repetitions
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Drier underwear, without the feeling of always being wet
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Sleeping through the night
Women and men who have difficulty performing kegel exercises on their own may find biofeedback therapy helpful. With professional instruction from a nurse specialist or pelvic floor therapist, many people experience significant improvement in pelvic floor muscle strength, tone, and function with a good regime.
It’s crucial to remember that incontinence and pelvic floor symptoms almost always have solutions and shouldnt be shrugged off as normal. You can try these exercises regardless of how long you have had your symptoms. Even if you have been experiencing leakage for as short as 1 month or as long as 10 years, it is never too late to try Kegels.
Find time each day to squeeze it into your routine. Most of the time Kegels will result in improvement of your symptoms. If you are not experiencing the desired effect, you may benefit from a consultation with a specialist.
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What Are Pelvic Muscles
Pelvic muscles are located at the base of your core. They stretch like a trampoline or hammock from the pubic bone back to the tailbone. Pelvic muscles support the bladder, bowel and uterus. When these muscles contract, the organs are lifted and tightened, preventing accidental urination, bowel movements, and gas. When these muscles relax, you are able to urinate and have a bowel movement. These muscles also play a role in sexual pleasure and the birthing process.
For many, weak pelvic muscles can cause bladder control problems and leakage when you cough, sneeze, laugh, or strain. Weakening of pelvic muscles result from pregnancy, childbirth, aging, hormones associated with menopause, and straining these muscles due to constipation, chronic cough, or being overweight.
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