Stress Incontinence

Urinary Incontinence Treatments In Oxford

About Stress Incontinence

What is Stress INCONTINENCE?

Urinary incontinence is a common concern, affecting 1 in 3 women. There are 3 common types of incontinence; stress incontinence, urge incontinence and mixed incontinence, all of which can cause the bladder to expel urine without control. In particulty, stress incontinence occurs where pelvic floor muscles have become weakened or damaged. The Pelvic floor muscles have an important function to support the pelvic organs, such as the bladder and bowel, and play an important role in helping us control when we go to the toilet. If the Pelvic floor becomes weakened then we are unable to hold the bladder securely when experiencing simple every day movements that cause internal pressure, such as bending over, laughing or sneezing, and even sexual intercourse. Severity can range from occasionally leaking small amounts of urine to full incontinence and leaking the entire bladder contents. This can be extremely embarrassing for some and will limit life activities such as sports, dancing or socialising and could even impact a person’s confidence to engage in sexual relationships.

What Causes Stress Incontinence?

There are multiple reason why a woman may develop weakened pelvic floor muscles including:

Pregnancy and childbirth (Which also explains the prevalence in women over men - Yes men have a pelvic floor too!)
Menopause - which can result in the loosing of muscle strength
Smokers with a chronic cough
Obesity
Constipation
Pelvic floor or bladder muscle injury
Long term high impact activities

How do you treat Stress Incontinence?

The general premise of stress incontinence is to do with weakened muscles, therefore, put quite simply, the muscles need to be strengthened again. Unfortunately it is not quite as easy as it sound though, right? You will often be advised by a health professional to simply do pelvic floor exercises, and whilst this is very true, this won’t always be suitable for everyone to do as they can be time consuming and slow to see progress.

There is also the option to use kegal balls to help stimulate the vaginal and pelvic muscles with a small electrical current. Again this may be a suitable option for some, however for some this may feel invasive by having to insert the balls into the vaginal canal each time the exercise is performed.

For those who are experiencing extreme urinary incontinence it might be worth discussing with your GP in the first instance, as they may wish to investigate and there are surgical options available, however, strengthening the muscle is usually the first line treatment.

We have another option…

Fortunately at Lumiere Medispa we are able to provide the very latest evidence based treatment for stress incontinence using the HIPEX chair (HIPEX = High Intensity Pelvic Exercises). This simple, non invasive, treatment means you can keep your clothes on, sit down for 30 minutes, read a book and let our medical CE approved device do all the hard work for you. This achieved through electromagnetic pulses that enforce full muscle fibre contraction to the equivalent of 30,000 pelvic floor contractions.