Bladder leakage otherwise known as Urinary Incontinence in women can be difficult and
sometimes embarrassing to deal with in this video we're going to work through the best tips to help
with those symptoms now before we begin if you want more information on bladder leakage what
causes it everything about it it's all gonna be in the description below but now let's begin with
those tips okay so let's begin with tip number one tip number one is i really want you to think about
how much caffeine you are having during the day keep a log of it maybe a diary of it on your phone
write down how much caffeine you're having caffeine is found in many different things
from coffee to teas to energy drinks okay to different types of fizzy drinks that might
have some caffeine in them so you really need to find out how much caffeine you're having
and really try and reduce your caffeine intake this is really going to help we've spoken about
how caffeine affects the platelet as well earlier in this video you also need to look at how much
alcohol you're consuming as well okay alcohol is a natural diuretic so it makes us we more often okay
it causes us to make to take more urine into the bladder which isn't going to help with
those incontinence issues so again you need to look how much alcohol you're having and try and
cut down okay if you can completely stop this is going to help even more
but if you can't completely stop you need to stay within the recommended limits which is 14 units
per week with alcohol three days i will leave more information about this in the description below
as well now interestingly drinking too much or too little fluid can actually make your symptoms worse
sorry i had to stand up my legs getting very tired but obviously drinking too much fluid is going to
make us we more okay that's pretty obvious but drinking too little fluid is going to mean that
our urine is more concentrated and it's going to aggravate the bladder lining which is actually
going to make things worse okay so we need to make sure we're drinking the right amount of
fluid okay the recommended amount of fluid six to eight glasses a day but please remember that it's
not just water you get it from the other fluids and foods that you eat as well that does all count
towards it and also making sure we have a certain cut-off point as well so we're not drinking past
a certain time we're not doing it too late otherwise we're going to be up all night
going to toilet moving on to tip number two minimizing certain foods that we know make bladder
symptoms worse so for example certain citrus foods oranges limes grapefruit okay all of these
can potentially make symptoms worse even in their juice form as well spicy foods tomato based sauces
okay even certain chocolates as well they've all been shown to potentially make symptoms worse so
what do you need to do well you need to really think about it how much of these are you having
and potentially maybe keep a diary of potentially cutting down on them and seeing if there's any
improvement i wouldn't just stop all of them straight away okay because it might be certain
ones that aggravate your symptoms more compared to the other ones who keep a diary see which
one works for you see which one doesn't affect you at all okay that's probably the best device
now moving on to tip number three tip number three is more long-term advice as well
if you remember earlier we spoke about how pressure on the bladder can make symptoms worse so
please remember if you are overweight that will be putting a lot more pressure on the bladder
so potentially trying to lose some weight will potentially help with those symptoms as well
if you want to check if you are overweight for example you can check your bmi which i will
leave a link to in the description below just to check if your weight status is good but if
you are overweight or obese and you want to lose some weight i do have some really good videos
which will scientifically evidence to show how you can lose weight okay so if you're interested
i'll leave a link to it up here and a few in the description below as well okay so the next tip
that i want to discuss is pelvic floor muscle training okay i feel like this video wouldn't
be complete if we didn't speak about it so the pelvic floor muscles are basically responsible
for controlling the flow of urine okay so they control the flow so if we're able to strengthen
those muscles it will help with our symptoms and this is there's a lot of research on this this is
all scientifically backed so next thing i want to discuss with you is how we can potentially
strengthen our pelvic floor muscle now before i go through this exercise please first speak
to your healthcare professional first to make sure that you're appropriate to do pelvic floor
strengthening exercises okay because they can actually harm some people by doing these exercises
okay if they're not done correctly they can cause a lot of discomfort during sex for example if the
exercises are done whilst actually urinating they can cause damage to the bladder or the kidneys
so please always burst speech to your healthcare professional before doing any pelvic floor muscle
exercise okay so first of all how is the exercise done well the first thing we need to do is we need
to locate the correct muscle the best way to do this sit down with your knees apart and we're
trying to find the muscle of our back passage okay and the best way to find this is to tense
that area as if you're trying to stop yourself from passing wind that's probably the best way
to describe it okay and now pretend you're sat on the toilet okay and you're about to urinate
and you're gonna stop it okay it might feel a bit more difficult and a bit different okay but
it's the same area that we're looking at okay once you've got that and you mastered it the next thing
you need to do is imagine you're both passing wind and passing urine at the same time you're trying
to stop them so focus on using both of their muscles there that muscle in that area basically
don't cross your legs keep your legs open don't tense your stomach okay don't tense your buttocks
your butt cheeks or anything like that okay just tense that area that's the only part that we're
working on here so that's a really important bit to remember okay so now that we've located
the muscle and we know what we're doing when we're tensing that area the british association
of urological surgeons recommend that we need to train both our fast and slow acting muscles okay
so for our slow-acting muscles what you need to do is you need to hold that area for 10 seconds
so hold the muscle for 10 seconds to tense it make sure you're breathing make sure you're not
tightening your buttocks and your legs are open and you're not tightening your your belly or
anything like that would just isolate that area so hold it for 10 seconds then rest for four seconds
and then repeat it 10 times no more than 10 times and for fast muscle activity the same area that
we've been tensing for 10 seconds at this time we're going to do for one second okay so tense
for one second and release and we're gonna do this ten times so that's our fast muscle activity
that's the two exercises so we had slow muscle activity and fast muscle activity okay
you can repeat it up to six times in a day so the next thing i want to discuss is seeking medical
advice please if you're having any bladder leakage or incontinence whichever you want to call it
please please please speak to your healthcare professional that's the most important thing
we spoke about some of the causes that that might be causing the incontinence but please
remember as well one of the less common causes as well can sometimes be bladder cancer okay
and this is why it's so important that we get our healthcare professional involved
if you're having any sort of symptoms if it's just started if it's been going on for a while
please don't hesitate to contact them and they will investigate it to make sure there's nothing
else that's sinister that could potentially be causing you please also remember that if you
live here in the uk you may be able to access the nhs incontinence services some places
you can self-refer some places your healthcare professional will need to refer you on so please
be aware of that as well i don't know how it works in other countries but again your healthcare
professional over there will be able to help and support you with this so it looks like we've come
to the end of this week's video i really hope that these tips help you and as i always say at the
end of every single week's video always remember that you're awesome and i will see you next week