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Even little girls should know how to use the toilet and get out of bed in the morning to avoid urinary incontinence in the future. They can harm them, among others ubiquitous springboards, stopping peeing until break and peeing «at the aviator». Awareness of your own body can prevent a problem that is currently struggling with every third Polish woman – says the urogynecological physiotherapist Karolina Leja, or FizjoWoman.
- Even young girls suffer from urinary incontinence. Reason? Harmful habits and dangerous pastimes such as jumping on a trampoline
- Urogynecological physiotherapists help to deal with the problem of urinary incontinence. Treatment must begin with exercise, surgery is the last resort
- Physiotherapy for women with urinary incontinence involves working with the pelvic floor. It is easy to make mistakes that may result, for example, in a painful intercourse
- You can find more such stories on the TvoiLokony home page
Urinary incontinence – a difficult problem for women
Urinary incontinence is a social disease. It is common among women for whom it is still an embarrassing and concealed problem. Scientific research shows that although the vast majority of seniors suffer from urinary incontinence, the ailment is also not unknown to young women and even teenagers. The problem is u 75 percent women over 75 years old, in 44-57 percent. women in the age group 40–60 years and in 25 percent. girls aged 14–21. It occurs mainly as a result of damage to the pelvic floor muscles and weakening of the muscles surrounding the urethra. In 34 percent. cases it happens after childbirth.
Those women who receive treatment speak of their ailments with great embarrassment.
– They are looking for confirmation that they are not alone, that this is not a problem that only concerns them. That is why it is so important to say that urinary incontinence does not only occur in seniors. And irregularities in this area may translate into withdrawal from sexual life – says Karolina Leja, urogynecological physiotherapist.
Karolina Leja runs the FizjoWoman fanpage, where women struggling with urinary incontinence most often come across by accident, because they have never heard that something like urogynecological physiotherapy it exists at all. There are about 500 urogynecological physiotherapists in Poland. Compared to the total number of physiotherapists of 48, this is very little. In Western Europe, urogynecological physiotherapy has been doing well for 30 years. It’s hard to find a woman who hasn’t heard of her. It started to function in our country some 10 years ago, but it is still a long way for every Polish woman to know about this method of treatment.
Why does urinary incontinence also happen to young girls?
– More and more women in their thirties come with him who say that they have been dealing with urinary incontinence for several years, but do not know what to do about it and have delayed visiting a specialist, hoping that it would pass by itself. So it’s safe to say that it is a problem of every third woman – regardless of age. My youngest patient was 20 years old – says Karolina Leja.
The reasons for the emergence of an embarrassing ailment at a young age are complex and are related primarily to incorrect everyday habits.
– We often have bad habits from childhood. Our parents teach us to pee because we’re leaving the house right now. It is similar at school when a child reports that he would like to go to the toilet and hears the answers: “hold on until the break” or “there was a break a moment ago”. Therefore, we learn to pee on demand, “in advance” and don’t feel your bladder. In addition, physical activities that often harm us, such as trampolines, are becoming more and more popular. Poorly selected activity and improperly performed exercises can weaken the pelvic floor or make it excessively tense, and the muscles simply stop functioning properly. Every day we have a wrong body posture, we breathe incorrectly, we are very unaware of our body and before we notice that there is a problem, this problem becomes well developed – explains the physiotherapist.
Also read: Dangerous Springboard. The number of accidents is increasing
It’s a big mistake to ignore the problem when it’s in the bud. Physiological changes progress and the greater their advancement, the more difficult it is to reverse them later. At first, exercise can help, but when the problem is neglected, drug treatment and even surgery may be necessary.
– When a woman has no bladder control, when she feels that she is not holding her urine even while “doing nothing” – simply standing or changing position in bed, it means advanced urinary incontinence. In such cases, surgery is performed. The procedure is also considered when the patient is really conscientiously exercising and after six months of therapy there are no effects. The operation consists in strengthening or restoring the pubic-urethral ligaments with the use of suburethral tapes. However, it should be remembered that this does not relieve us of physical therapy. Our muscular apparatus must be active. The operation only gives us passive stabilization – the reconstruction of the anatomy, so if we do not activate the muscles, the effect we will achieve will probably be short-lived. Physiotherapy should be an integral part of the treatment of urinary incontinence. It should be the first step or a complement to surgical treatment.
– explains FizjoWoman.
See also: Disorders of statics of the reproductive organ. Symptoms and diagnosis
Urinary incontinence exercises. Physiotherapy is an art that is not easy to master
Urinary incontinence becomes a serious limitation for most women because they feel urine leakage during sudden increases in intra-abdominal pressure. So they avoid movement when they should exercise – but with their head.
– When there is a problem of urinary incontinence, it is very important to visit a urogynecological physiotherapist, because you need to check how the pelvic floor works – whether it is excessively tense or weakened. Understand where the problem is. It is necessary to develop individual therapywhich is based on working with the pelvic floor and introducing correct habits of everyday life. When it comes to the pelvic floor, it is important to feel it, find out how hard we are to exercise, how to work with the pelvic floor during the breath, what types of contractions to perform – says Karolina Leja.
– Some of my patients say that she participated in group exercises and the problem has not necessarily resolved. Moreover, suddenly there was something that had never happened before, such as a painful intercourse. Therefore, group classes should be attended by people who can already see how to work with their body, understand what they are supposed to do, how to work with the pelvic floor. It is not enough to imagine the movement as if we had a tampon in the vagina and wanted to gently tighten it and then pull it towards the navel. Not every lady will be able to do it properly. Some women, instead of doing the lifting job, i.e. lifting the pelvic floor towards the navel, focus only on tightening the external muscles. They don’t know how hard the pelvic floor can work. They try to make the contraction as strong as possible in order to feel the whole area at all. Working on deep, tonic contraction is a 20% job. our strengthshe is really small. Intense exercise can make our muscles too tense, which can lead to painful intercourse. These are really not as easy exercises as most people think.
As much as 90 percent patients who report to FizjoWoman claim that their lifestyle is sedentary.
– We are now living in a time of going from the extreme to the extreme. Either we don’t move at all, or we suddenly switch from sitting mode to the gym and start lifting weights without realizing it, how to support the pelvic floor. Neither of these situations is good. To function properly, our body needs exercise, not a stomach heater. We are to have a mobile, fully flexible body. Meanwhile, people are not able to adapt their training to themselves – there is either all or nothing – says Karolina Leja.
– After training, we should do stretching so that our body is not constantly tense, it can relax. Lack of stretching after exercise can contribute to the problem of urinary incontinence, because our muscles are overworked and due to overload they cannot relax, they cannot react properly to hold urine during sudden increases in intra-abdominal pressure, e.g. sneezing – explains FizjoWoman.
How to prevent urinary incontinence problems?
There are a lot of mistakes that we make every day, and at the same time expose ourselves to problems with the pelvic floor, including urinary incontinence.
– Every action can actually be done wrong and it can hurt us. Let’s start with lifting. We cannot carry it on a bent spinebecause in the long run, only our spine will not suffer, but also the pelvic floor. The hunched position will increase the intra-abdominal pressure, it will push our organs down, and the pelvic floor will have to counteract this. Question: how much can it survive unscathed? – explains FizjoWoman.
– Plus, we should pay attention to toilet habits: do not rinse while peeing, do not pee “on the flyer” or “on the skier”. We don’t pee in reserve. We should fully relax our urine, our feet should be in contact with the ground, and the torso should be straight. Let’s not put children on the toilet without supporting their feet. Let’s bring them a stool. Lack of support will mean that they are not fully relaxed, and will therefore have to push to pee or poop. We ourselves should put a stool under our legs during defecation – so that the knees are slightly higher than the hips. This position is similar to the crouch position, and in the crouch position, our rectum has an increased light, which makes defecation easier. This position will also be helpful for constipation.
– Another thing to watch out for is getting out of bed. We shouldn’t get up as if we were doing a tummy. While lying on the back, we should bend our legs, roll over to the side, and then lower our legs out of the bed, and lift the torso, supporting ourselves with our hands, that is, do it with as little involvement of the abdominal press as possible. Sneezing and coughing – this is what we should do with the head turning to the side to reduce intra-abdominal pressure. All these activities are aimed at protecting the pelvic floor against sudden increases in intra-abdominal pressure, that is, “pushing” our organs towards the pelvic floor. These are habits that we can acquire now – says the physiotherapist.
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