The funny thing about stress urinary incontinence, or SUI, is that life stress has very little to do with causing the form of urinary leakage. However, this type of women’s urinary incontinence (one of the three major types) can create a lot of stress for affected women.
What is Stress Urinary Incontinence?
In short, the “stress” in stress urinary incontinence refers to any kind of stress or pressure put on the abdominal cavity, especially the bladder, which causes urine leakage. You know you have SUI if it causes you to leak urine anytime you put stress on your abdominal cavity by coughing, sneezing, laughing, or exercising. Depending on the severity of your condition, sometimes even a small change in body posture, such as stepping off a curb or standing up, can cause urine leakage. All of these changes to posture can put stress on your abdominal cavity.
How Can You Stop Stressing About SUI?
When it comes to SUI, or any form of urinary incontinence, you have three basic options:
1. Cope with your condition by yourself without medical advice
2. Get help from a medical adviser and use conservative means
3. Use a surgical solution to resolve your symptoms if your condition is more severe
Obviously these options start in the “do it yourself” category. There is nothing wrong with option one — coping with your condition by yourself — except that without a thorough medical screening you don’t have a precise diagnosis of your condition. In addition, you could be cheating yourself of conservative medical solutions that can make your life more comfortable and save you money (and embarrassment)! If you choose option one, you certainly won’t be alone. Almost half of all women with urinary incontinence never seek help. Those that seek help wait a long time … on average almost seven years!
What is good about the first option is that you will likely educate yourself about your condition, and become a strong self-health advocate. However, we encourage all women affected by urinary leakage to take an additional step once they have armed themselves with knowledge: get help! To be sure, knowledge is power. When you are struggling with SUI, knowledge is the power to help you speak intelligently and honestly with your doctor about your condition. This is the second option. In turn, by seeking help you empower your doctor to support you and relieve symptoms with conservative medical options including pelvic floor muscle retraining, medication, acupuncture, and suggested lifestyle changes.
In addition, if necessary, by seeking help from your doctor you discover if you might need a surgical solution to resolve your symptoms. While most of us don’t like to think about having surgery, if a simple outpatient surgery could alleviate or resolve your symptoms, wouldn’t you want to know?
We Applaud “Do It Yourself” Women!
We really do. If you are a do-it-yourself kind of woman, we applaud your efforts! We also encourage you to go one step further and just get some feedback from a trusted medical source. This expands your powers of self-healing more than you might realize. So do educate yourself by reading this blog, downloading our ebook, or just learning more about your condition. Then go one step further (maybe eventually two steps!) and get some medical feedback. You will be glad you did because it will help you stop stressing about stress urinary incontinence!
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