Preventing and managing incontinence to preserve your wellness and the ability to enjoy active aging. Many people miss out on life and stay home rather than risking the possibility of an accident.
Urinary incontinence (SUI) is described as an involuntary urine leakage. The most common type is Stress Urinary Incontinence (SUI) when leakage occurs during physical exercise, sneezing, coughing, lifting and twisting.
The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) states that pelvic floor muscle training is essential to prevent and reduce Urinary Incontinence, yet this is often overlooked in exercise program designs.
Urinary Incontinence impact women twice as much as men in ALL AGES, and can significantly reduce self-confidence, libido and desire to perform physical activity. Pelvic floor muscles support the bladder, uterus and bowels in women, and the bladder and bowels in men. SUI affects 25% of premenopausal women and 50% of post menopausal women and thus can effect quality of life and overall life satisfaction.
Pelvic floor muscles provide support for internal organs like bladder, yet a loss of muscular control, or pelvic floor dysfunction, may be a factor in development of SUI on women of all ages.
The incidence of Stress Urinary Incontinence increases with aging. In addition, being an athlete or active as a young child may increase the chance for women to have SUI later in life because of abrupt changes in intra- abdominal pressure, such as occurs during sports, can damage pelvic floor muscle over long periods of time, especially in high-impact sports such as gymnastics, cheerleading, cross country and track.
Research shows that women with SUI have weak hip muscles. Weakness in the hip and gluteals (muscles of the buttocks) often increase pelvic disfunction that maybe improved with specific exercise training. Physically inactive older adults who sit too often experience overall muscle weakness and incontinence. Weak muscles in the hips is especially linked to balance problems, slow walking speed and taking small steps when walking. All of these increases the risk of falling and fall related injuries which are mostly preventable.
Eating disorders can also weaken the pelvic floor muscles, as well as conditions such diabetes, obesity, smoking, stroke, depression, functional impairment, some medications including diuretics increase the likelihood of stress uncinate Incontinence in women as well.
A strong pelvic girdle complex includes stability of the hips and the pelvis. In research a significant increase was seen because of the exercises provided contractions of the gluteals, abdominal, hip adductors determining an important link between strength in the gluteals and hip joint. A well-functioning pelvic floor assist in limbo-pelvic stability, the pelvic floor muscles are activated together with other muscles during functional tasks; activation of the abdominal, gluteal (the muscles of the buttocks), hip abductors, shoulder flexion and extension muscles.
When you experience pelvic floor problems, bladder or bowel control, it is advisable to seek help from a professional to determine the cause of the symptoms. Additionally, ask your personal trainer or your physical therapist to include pelvic floor safe exercises into your current program. You may need just have to tweak few exercise to reap the benefit and be able to better manage and prevent Stress Urinary Incontinence.