Can Stress & Anxiety Cause Urinary Incontinence?
Yes, both stress and anxiety can cause urinary incontinence. Are you a teeth clencher? Can you guess what this does to your pelvic floor? Your jaw and pelvic floor are connected. Who knew? Well now you know.
We live in stressful times and and not only does stress and anxiety affect our mental health but also our physical health.
Firstly, let’s discuss stress and urinary incontinence.
Do you ever leak in a stressful situation? Or do you have anxiety and need to deal with urinary incontinence? Are you wondering what are the reasons for this? Learn how to deal with urinary incontinence and make your life more comfortable!
Stress, especially the sudden and short ones, can lead to many changes in your body. Increased heart rate, rapid breathing, and increased blood pressure are just some of them. This can cause the bladder to react, leading to uncontrolled passing of urine. When you are anxious or stressed you may also feel the urge to pee more often. But even If you feel like you need to pee all the time, there may not be much coming out. Just constant trips to the loo to find only a dribble coming out. So frustrating. This is where we also encourage women to start bladder training. Show that bladder who is boss.
Secondly, incontinence in turn very often causes severe stress and anxiety that prevents normal functioning. So, we need to get our stress under control for our mental wellbeing and to control our bladder!
The fear of an unpleasant situation is sometimes so high that many women give up sports, wearing light coloured clothes, playing with their children, social events and even leaving the house. Staying in constant tension leads to frustration, loss of confidence, and a feeling of losing control of your own life.
Learn more about anxiety and mental health. The Importance Of Our Mental Health
But I have good news! Urinary incontinence can be treated. It's simply a symptom that can get better with lifestyle and exercise changes.
How to Stop Stress Urinary Incontinence
To help stop stress urinary incontinence, you can:
- Quit smoking
- Avoid lifting
- Lose excess weight
- Avoid alcohol
- Drink water and eat the right food
- Do daily pelvic floor exercises
- Talk to a therapist
Quit smoking
Studies have shown that smokers are at an increased risk for incontinence and even more alarming, it can lead to bladder cancer.
Smoking leads to the occurrence of chronic cough which puts pressure on the pelvic floor muscles and causes them to weaken which increases the chance of stress urinary incontinence. In addition, smoking is an irritant to the bladders which makes smokers have a more frequent urge to pee.
If you smoke and experience urinary incontinence, you should quit smoking. Moreover, even if you don’t experience urinary incontinence, you should eliminate the risk of it and don’t smoke. It can benefit not only your pelvic floor muscles but your health in general!
Avoid lifting
You should avoid lifting as it puts strain on your pelvic floor muscles. Remember when you do need to lift, you should tighten your pelvic floor muscles before and during the lift. This helps to protect your pelvic floor.
If you are not sure which muscles you should tighten, you can find them by:
- When sitting on the toilet, you should try and stop the flow of urine and feel which muscles are responsible for it. Only do this very seldom as it can cause a bladder infection.
- Women can do a finger test and insert a couple of fingers into the vagina and then squeeze the pelvic floor muscles (you can imagine you are stopping the flow of urine and holding in wind).
- If you really struggle to find your pelvic floor muscles our Secret Whispers Pelvic Floor Weights actually teach you where your pelvic floor muscles are as well.
Lose excess weight
Obesity is one of the reasons for urinary incontinence and losing excess weight can improve or even make the symptoms go away completely.
Exercise can help you to stay healthy and lose weight. But it can also be the source of embarrassment and stress for many women if they experience urinary leakage during exercise. Of course, it is not something you should feel ashamed of, but if it makes you more comfortable, you should start with lower impact activities while you improve your pelvic floor muscles. Remember to not quit anything you love because of the leaks! Just work on your pelvic floor strength 😊You will get there!
Lower impact exercises
- Light weights on high reps
- Cycling
- Aerobics and water aerobics
- Swimming
- Yoga
- Pilates
Some exercises to avoid or minimize (until you gain your pelvic muscles strength)
- Any heavy lifting weights especially over shoulder height
- Dead lifting
- Bicycle legs
- Leg presses
- High impact aerobics which include jumping and sit ups.
Avoid alcohol
Alcohol can make your symptoms of stress urinary incontinence or an overactive bladder worse. Alcohol is a diuretic so after drinking you produce more urine, but it does not mean you are well hydrated. After drinking you not only need to pee more often, but you also may think you need to go to the toilet even if you don’t.Drink water and eat the right food
You might think that avoiding water will stop your incontinence. The truth is it can only make it worse because it reduces your bladder's capacity. You should drink 6 to 8 glasses a day.
Drinks and Foods that may irritate the bladder:
- Chocolate
- Carbonated beverages
- Coffee and tea
- Spicy food
- Tomato-based products
- Citrus fruits such as oranges, grapefruits, and lemons
Always test and see what works for you. We recommend a food diary to see over a few weeks which foods do irritate your bladder. You may be surprised.
Foods that are good for the bladder:
- Pears
- Bananas
- Whole grains
- Nuts
- Eggs
- Potatoes
- Lean protein
Do daily pelvic floor exercises
There are 3 different types of Kegel exercises: SLOW, FAST, AND THE KNACK.
The Slow Kegel
To begin, get into a position that works for you. Sitting or standing will do.Now, imagine holding in wind and wee at the same time. That is the areas you want to be contracting.
Always remember to keep your breathing even and steady.
TIP – Count out loud as it’s impossible to hold your breath then.
Now pull up fast for up to 10 seconds
Rest for 5 seconds (do not push down on your pelvic floor) Resting your pelvic floor is equally important as exercising it.
Repeat 10 times.
Aim to do 3 of these sets a day in combination with the Fast Kegels (below).
The Fast Kegel
The Fast Kegel technique is a fast rapid contraction of your pelvic floor muscles, which helps engage the muscles more quickly and effectively, preventing leaks when you laugh, cough or sneeze.To begin, get into a position that works for you. Sitting or standing will do.
Now, imagine holding in wind and wee at the same time. That is the areas you want to be contracting.
Always remember to keep your breathing even and steady.
TIP – Count out loud as it’s impossible to hold your breath then.
Now pull up fast for 1 second
Rest for 1 second
Repeat 10 times.
Aim to do 3 of these sets a day in combination with the Slow Kegels.
The Knack
This method can be 98% effective so give it a go!
Every time you go to lift anything heavy, pot plant, child, car seat etc. always engage your pelvic floor so it is supported. So many women develop a prolapse suddenly because they lifted something heavy and did not support their pelvic floor. Don’t let this happen to you. Knowledge is power.
If you are finding it difficult to locate and engage your pelvic floor muscles, you can get our Secret Whispers Kegel pelvic floor weights that will teach you. You simply pop them in, do your slow and fast Kegel exercises while doing other daily activities! This is why so many women love them and so many pelvic floor physios recommend them.
Aim for 10 Slow Kegels and 10 Fast Kegels 2 to 3 times a day. Get in the habit of incorporating them at mealtimes and brushing your teeth. They can improve your pelvic floor health, helps with incontinence, treat prolapses and improves sexual function.
You can try mediation as well to deal with your stress and anxiety. Try finding 5 minutes a day twice a day if you can for meditation and your body and mind will thank you. It’s amazing what just 5 minutes time out can do for you. Check out our article: A Beginners Guide To Meditation
Talk to a therapist
Urinary incontinence in situations of severe stress can have a psychological basis. Then urological treatment will be useless, and therapy will be necessary. It is worth contacting a psychologist or psychotherapist who will allow you to get used to stress and teach you how to act in such situations in order to prevent involuntary leakage of urine. You can also try self-help such as CBT Therapy (Cognitive behavioural therapy).
To find out more you can read our other blogs:
How To Manifest Your Leak Free Life
The Ultimate Guide to a Strong Pelvic Floor
You can also join our fabulous womens only private Facebook Group
Fancy a FREEBIE? Download our FREE guide The easy way to get a stronger pelvic floor
Any questions? Just email us at support@secretwhispers.co.uk and we will get straight back to you.
