Incontanance

In the first of the series, Ulrika Jonsson talks candidly about light adult incontinence (LAI) which she suffered from after the birth of her fourth child.
By sharing her experiences she hopes to help reduce the stigma surrounding this normally guarded subject.
New research by the Wellbeing of Women charity shows that one third of British women over the age of 30 have experience of this condition. However, women often suffer in silence falsely assuming they are alone and too embarrassed to seek help.
The condition is linked not only to childbirth, but also to the menopause, which results in a loss of hormones that play an essential role in keeping the muscles strong and elastic.
Exercises
Pelvic floor exercises can be used to improve bladder control.
The pelvic floor muscles relax at the same time as the bladder contracts in order to let urine out, but if they lose strength they may begin to relax at other times, causing leakage.
The exercises involve clenching the muscles you would use to prevent yourself urinating.
Another treatment is a weighted cone which is held in the vagina to teach the pelvic floor muscles to contract.
Alternatively, a technique as simple as emptying the bladder at fixed intervals can produce relatively quick results.
Other treatments can include drugs, electrical stimulation of the pelvic floor, and, as a last resort, surgery.



Incontinence is often seen as a woman’s problem, but that’s not the reality. Women are more likely than men to have bladder incontinence (32% of the female population experience it compared to 13% of the male population), but men are just as likely as women to develop a bowel control problem.

It’s also a myth that incontinence only happens to older people. While it's more likely, though not inevitable, that you may lose bladder control as you get older, anyone can develop symptoms at any age. Almost 5 million people in the UK under the age of 24 are thought to have experienced a bladder control problem. The same number of young people are thought to have had bowel incontinence.