Urinary Incontinence Is By No Means Normal
It is necessary to treat incontinence as soon as possible and do it well, in the hands of a professional. Because the solution to incontinence is not the pads for adults. Before you can do many things.
Let’s talk about incontinence, let’s start with the concept. The official definition is: “urinary incontinence is the loss of bladder control or the inability to control urination (urinate).” Therefore, incontinence is the lack of containment, the inability to retain. It has nothing to do with the volume or what is leaking.
Why do I start this article like this? Because most people, when they think of incontinence, they think of urinary incontinence; abundant, for more details. That thought is true, but only partially.
Either it is contained or it is not. The amount that is lost is almost an anecdote. A sporadic droplet is incontinence, very mild, but it already tells us that the system is suffering and is beginning to fail.
This is a concept that in our society is difficult to understand. The vast majority of women consider a small loss to be normal at certain ages, so there is no need to deal with it.
I speak of women because incontinence is normalized in the female world. A man with incontinence takes care of her immediately.
Incontinence pad advertising doesn’t help
Why do we consider incontinence normal? Because it is something very common and because the messages that reach us tell us so.
Television commercials are doing perineal health a sad favor. In the ads, women feel happy and grateful for their pads, they comment on each other how comfortable they are, how safe they feel and how happy they are. For wearing a compress …
These ads are basically responsible for spreading the idea that the future of women is incontinence, but that this is not a problem, because we currently have fabulous and extremely comfortable pads, which are neither noticeable nor smell. Doesn’t this message seem a bit perverse to you?
If a woman has urinary incontinence, it would be desirable to find solutions to this situation, not to find a way to live it with comfort and discretion. We understand that if incontinence, for whatever reason, cannot be solved, effective, comfortable and discreet pads are very welcome, of course.
We go beyond urinary incontinence
Does that sound to you that when bending over or making a force, it is not at all strange to hear an escaped “fart”? This embarrassing situation that generates laughter and looks, beyond the social bad time, implies a problem that is brewing.
An escaped wind tells us that the anal sphincter is failing, that in a stressful situation it cannot contain the most subtle, it cannot contain a gas. We are talking about anal incontinence.
Anal incontinence is exactly the same as urinary incontinence, only located in a different area. The “mildest” level of anal incontinence is gas loss. But the level can be raised. It may be that the anal sphincter cannot contain fluid and we have incontinence during diarrhea. Or it can go a little further and contain no solid. We will have a fecal incontinence.
If urinary incontinence is an open secret, anal incontinence is a bigger secret. It is a much tougher situation, which conditions social life much more.
Note to keep in mind: sometimes when the anal sphincter is suffering we can detect it before we have symptoms. Pass toilet paper without going belly. If the paper is stained, it means that the anal sphincter is not closing “hermetically”, it remains slightly open, so it stains the paper. That should be a first notice to attend to.
Incontinence, whatever it is, shouldn’t worry us, but we should take care of it. To ignore and ignore them is to buy numbers to have major problems in the future.
An incontinence is like a crack in the wall. It appears for a reason. If the reason is not addressed, we can paint over it and with a bit of luck we will cover it, but that crack will grow, without a doubt. If the reason is corrected, the crack will not grow and we can easily repair it.
A consultation with the pelvic floor physiotherapist is necessary
When I talk about attending to the problem, I am talking about consulting with professionals, not throwing yourself into compulsive kegel exercises. Remember that the professionals who can help you the most and best are the pelvic floor physiotherapists
Faced with a problem, it is necessary to make an assessment, to know the origin. Few people know that urinary incontinence, for example, can be the result of both muscle weakness and excess muscle tension. Two opposite situations that surprisingly generate the same symptom.
Common sense tells us that having losses means that the muscle is weak and therefore cannot contain. This is true, but it is also true that a muscle that is too tense, contracted, cannot work well and is not efficient. Outcome? The same incontinence.
This is an unknown but very important detail. If we self-diagnose and, above all, self-treat (with Chinese balls, kegels …) we run the risk of making the situation much worse. If we add toning exercises to hypertonia (excess tension and muscle tone), it will rain in the wet, the most normal thing is for the symptoms to multiply.
Do you have incontinence problems? Don’t worry but take care of it, don’t park it. Consult with pelvic floor physiotherapy. In these worlds, postponing is complicating.
