Living with incontinence

Lifestyle and urinary incontinence

In addition to medical help, there are many other ways to make the life of a person with urinary incontinence easier.Below are the best tips from the experts:

Check your fluid intake.Managing fluid intake – for example keeping your daily water intake to one litre– may be all you need to do to notice improvement. However, talk to your doctor before making any major changes.

Pay attention to your diet.Among the foods and beverages that can worsen incontinence are alcoholic beverages, foods and beverages containing caffeine, spicy foods, acidic foods such as citrus fruits and juices, and carbonated beverages.If you notice that your urinary incontinence symptoms worsen after consuming one of the above, removing or reducing your consumption of it may help.

Pelvic floor exercises.Your pelvic floor muscles help you hold your urine. If the muscles are weakened by pregnancy, prostate surgery, or you are overweight, you may experience leakage problems.However, you can strengthen your muscles and improve symptoms by doing specific exercises called Kegels. Pelvic floor exercises can also help with urinary urgency.

Be aware of possible emotional fluctuations.Incontinence can cause emotional distress and depression, especially urge incontinence, because it is such an unpredictable and sudden condition. Seek effective treatments until you get relief.

Future planning and programming.The simpler design can make living with urinary incontinence easier and less stressful.If you know, for example, that the elliptical trainer at the gym is causing you to leak urine, try something else. If you know that you always delay your shopping longer than you intended, consider one of the many urinary incontinence products to avoid embarrassing situations.

Discuss urinary incontinence with your partner.Living with urinary incontinence can also mean leaking urine during sex. And while it’s an embarrassing situation, you try to talk about it calmly with your partner.If you focus on the solution, you are bound to do better. Among the expert tips is to empty your bladder properly before intercourse as well as cutting down on fluids just before, to minimize urine leakage.

Too much liquid?

In fact, severely cutting back on fluids may make you run to the bathroom more often, not less. There is one exception: try to reduce your fluid intake shortly after 18:00 as this reduces the likelihood of getting up at night to go to the bathroom.

Too little fluid;

Dehydration can cause bladder irritation. How much water should you drink? This depends on many factors, including your health and activity level.Some experts recommend drinking about six to eight glasses of water a day. You can also get about 20% of your total water intake from food.

Alcoholic beverage

Beer, wine, liquor or in any other form, alcohol causes dehydration. But it dehydrates by increasing the amount of urine– which means more visits to the toilet. Alcohol also interferes with the brain’s signals to the bladder about when to release urine. So, if you have “urge incontinence,” also called overactive bladder, you may need to cut down or cut out alcohol altogether.

Coffee, tea, energy drinks, colas

Caffeine can also stimulate the bladder as it acts as a diuretic, causing more urine to be produced.Cutting back on caffeinated beverages can help control your overactive bladder, but you may not need to cut out coffee, tea, energy drinks, or colas.Switch to decaffeinated beverages, low-acid coffees, and non-citrus teas.

Spicy food

Spicy foods can do more than irritate your taste buds or make you rub your eyes.They can also irritate your bladder. Reducing the spicy taste can help keep you away from the toilet. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doomed to an unhealthy diet.We experiment with how spicy your foods can be without it affecting your urination habits – everyone is different which means finding spice tolerance is a matter of trial and error.

Acids: Citrus fruits and juices

Citrus fruits and citrus juices, such as oranges, grapefruit, clementines, lemons, and limes are all acidic. Because they can irritate your bladder, try cutting back on them to see if that improves your incontinence.

Carbonated drinks

Fizzy drinks can irritate sensitive cysts. So, if you have an overactive bladder, try cutting back on these drinks or cutting them out of your diet altogether.Carbonated drinks include soft drinks, soda and other “sparkling” waters. And if your taste is closer to champagne or other sparkling wines, keep in mind that, in addition to carbonation, the alcohol in these drinks could also be a stimulant to an overactive bladder.