If you leak urine or need to urinate frequently, you may have urinary incontinence, a common women’s health condition that affects your ability to control your bladder. Urinary incontinence is prevalent in women because pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause can strain your bladder and weaken the muscles that play a part in preventing urine from leaking.

The good news about urinary incontinence is that it can improve with treatment. Kegel exercises, which strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, are a well-known treatment option for urinary incontinence. And there’s another highly effective way to address this problem: biofeedback.

Here at Advanced Women’s Healthcare in Bloomington, Illinois, our incontinence patients have had great success with biofeedback. Read on to learn more about this innovative, nonsurgical treatment.

About urinary incontinence

There are different types of urinary incontinence.

Stress incontinence occurs when you leak urine as a result of physical stress on your bladder. For example, you may leak when you laugh, cough, or sneeze, or when you run, lift heavy objects, or even walk.

Frequency incontinence happens when you must urinate more often than you used to.

Urgency incontinence means that when you feel the need to urinate you have to get to a toilet fast to avoid leaking urine or having a full-blown accident.

You may experience incontinence during the day or at night, while you sleep. A need to urinate may wake you up several times a night, preventing you from getting the rest you need to feel good the next day.

Using biofeedback to treat urinary incontinence

The muscles in your pelvic floor area help with bladder control. When these muscles weaken, incontinence is more likely to occur. Kegel exercises can strengthen these muscles, but some women find it difficult to identify and work their pelvic floor muscles.

Biofeedback is a mind/body technique that teaches you how to locate your pelvic floor muscles so you can focus on strengthening them. This painless therapy uses special sensors and a computer that captures information about your muscular activity. The computer monitor lets you know when you contract the correct muscles.

By providing you with real-time information and feedback about your pelvic floor muscle function, you can learn how to control and strengthen these muscles. Biofeedback helps you control your bladder and increase the amount of time between bathroom visits.

There are other ways to treat urinary incontinence, such as medication, pessary devices that block urine leakage, collagen injections, and surgery. However, biofeedback offers an effective, nonsurgical, nonpharmaceutical treatment with few or no potential side effects.

Get help for your incontinence

Urinary incontinence can take a toll on your quality of life, interfering with your ability to stay active, sleep well, and participate in everyday activities. Let the caring, compassionate women’s health experts at Advanced Women’s Healthcare help you address this common women’s health condition. Call 309-808-3068 to book an appointment with our team of providers today.