Urinary Incontinence is the complaint of any involuntary leakage of urine. There are many different causes for this including pelvic floor weakness and pelvic floor tension. This may be caused by childbirth injury, surgery, aging, abdominal tension, and/or breathing dysfunction. There are different types of incontinence:

Stress Urinary Incontinence

The involuntary loss of urine on effort or exertion, or when coughing or sneezing.

Symptoms: loss of a small amount of urine with exertion (cough, sneeze or lifting something)

Cause: often pelvic floor muscle weakness and/or dysfunction

Urge Urinary Incontinence

The involuntary loss of urine due to a strong and sudden need to empty the bladder

Symptoms: a strong and sudden need to empty the bladder, but no leaking occurs (often also have increased frequency of urination)

Mixed Urinary Incontinence

Involuntary loss of urine associated with urgency, exertion, lifting, sneezing, or coughing

Symptoms: often will leak with increases in abdominal pressure

Causes: weak pelvic floor muscles and uninhibited bladder contractions
There may be many different causes of urinary incontinence.

What Angela Simpson Physiotherapy can do for you:

• Assess your symptoms and help determine what type of incontinence you have
• Provide exercises to help correct and/or control the condition
• Provide a voiding diary for client to fill in, to determine if bladder training is needed
• Provide education on dietary recommendations for incontinence
• Perform an internal pelvic floor exam to help determine the cause of the incontinence
• Provide pelvic floor muscle retraining by both internal and external pelvic floor cueing

A research survey of women both before pregnancy and during pregnancy compared to post partum:

• 39% of women had stress incontinence before compared to 49% after baby
• Same survey reported that 78% of women that had low back pain reported urinary incontinence