Kegel exercises for overactive bladder in men can help stop bladder urgency and bladder leakage.
Hi, I'm Michelle. And today I'm guiding you through Kegel exercises
for particularly for men who were suffering from overactive bladder problems.
Now, we're going to be going through two parts of this video. The first part is when to use
your Kegel exercises to stop urgency in its tracks. So that's really important to know.
And the second part, is how to use Kegel exercises to overcome overactive bladder symptoms such as
frequency, bladder urgency, and also to bladder incontinence. So both parts are really important.
Let's start with the first part, are using your Kegel exercises for urgency?
Now, let's say urgency. You've been to the pub, you've had a few too many
beers, which is not advisable for overactive bladder anyway,
and you've got some bladder urgency, what do you do? So the first thing you do when urgency
strikes is to sit rather than stand and the second thing you do is to try to relax your breathing.
The I think sometimes the instinct is to hold your breath and when you breathe, while this
pushes pressure down on your bladder, and it can make urgency worse. So it's really important
to relax your breathing and breathe normally. Now, here's where Kegel exercises come into play. What
you do is you contract your pelvic floor muscles using your Kegel exercises during your urgency and
the miraculous thing about this is when the pelvic floor muscles contract, it switches the bladder
muscle off or the truth the muscle off, and helps it to relax. So, it's like an off switch.
So how do we do those Kegel exercises? What you do are two steps. First of all, you try to
contract as if you're stopping the flow of urine, and at the same time, retract the penis
inward. So drawing it inwards to your body. As if a turtle is drawing its head back into its shell
and you try to maintain that contraction during that urgency, and then let it go, then let
the but then let the pelvic floor contraction go. If the urge is stopped, then you might be able to
get up and walk don't run to the bathroom. But you might need to repeat that contraction. Those
Kegel exercises a number of times to overcome that particular overactive bladder symptom.
Now, it's also really important to practice this in real world situations. For example,
if you're someone if you're a man who experiences urgency with running water, you might like to
practice this in the shower so you could turn the shower on. If that makes you urgent, then try to
use your pelvic floor muscles contract using your Kegel exercises for active real world practice so
that you know that you can feel confident in using those muscles and stopping urgency when it strikes
in a public situation. So that's the first way of using Kegel exercises to stop urgency.
Let's now go on to part two. Now this is doing Kegel strength exercises
and I've got a couple of little balloons here to demonstrate what I want to talk about.
So when the bladder feels these little stretch receptors, or like measuring sensors in the
walls of the bladder, and then measuring how much stretch is going on. Now as the bladder fills the
pelvic floor muscles underneath, and the little muscles inside the urine tube start to contract,
but we're not aware of it. So that automatically happens. When the bladder gets really full,
these receptors start to really fire off because there's lots of stretch in the bladder walls.
So these muscles have to contract much stronger. Now if your pelvic floor muscles are weak,
and the muscles in and around your urethra or your bladder tube are weak,
then you won't have the ability to store more urine, you'll be much more likely to be going to
the toilet or the bathroom frequently and needing to empty your bladder frequently. So this is where
Kegel exercises and strength exercises come into play to overcome overactive bladder symptoms.
So, what do you do? Well, the first thing you do is start to practice your Kegel exercises daily
trying to do them at least five out of seven days, you might need to start doing the exercises lying
down if your pelvic floor muscles are weak, and remembering as I just said that the correct action
for overcoming this overactive bladder symptom of urgency and leakage is to what two steps,
one, to tighten it as if you're stopping the flow. So contracting in and around the urethra,
but also two, shortening or retracting the penis at the same time. Now the goal is
ultimately to try to hold these exercises for 10 to 20 seconds. Now if you're a beginner,
that might just seem totally unrealistic. It's okay if you start off with one to two seconds,
what you'll find is with practice and over time, you'll be able to hold on to those
exercises longer and also to to perform them much stronger, which is what we're aiming for.
Now, also to you need to train like an athlete for Kegel strength exercises and that means training
them in the positions or training these muscles in the positions that you really need to work them,
you're most likely to experience overactive bladder symptoms when you're standing up.
So this means it's really important to practice your Kegel exercises
standing upright when you're able to. So standing upright is the most beneficial position
for strengthening your pelvic floor muscles and overcoming overactive bladder symptoms.
So I think you can actually see that there's two really
important parts to using Kegel exercises in managing overactive bladders for men.
The first part is doing Kegel exercises to stop urgency in its tracks. And the second part,
is to strengthen the pelvic floor muscles with regular Kegel exercises, so that you
can expand your bladder and improve your bladder control and also to stop urgency and frequency.
So, I really hope that this video helps you to overcome your overactive bladder symptoms and
manage your condition much better. If you found the video helpful today, I would really appreciate
it if you could give the video a like down below because that encourages YouTube to share the video
with other men that might be suffering from the sign overactive bladder problems. So, I'd like
to really thank you for watching today. I look forward to seeing you next time. Goodbye for now.