Hi, my name is Lore Bertuch and I've been with Shield HealthCare for over 20
years, and in those 20 years I've learned quite a bit about incontinence from
caregivers, as well as healthcare professionals. So today I'd like to share
some tips with you and empower you to live well with incontinence.
I want to remind everybody that incontinence can be caused by a disease
factor. It is not caused by old age. So be sure to tell your healthcare
professional or your doctor if you're experiencing any form of incontinence.
In fact, it's important that you tell your doctor, because he may be able to
mitigate or eliminate your incontinence by surgery, medication, physical therapy,
possibly Botox injections and laser treatments.
Take a look at what you drink
during the day if you're drinking a lot of coffee, tea ,spicy -- eating spicy food,
and alcohol, those irritate the bladder, so your incontinence will be irritated
by that. Even chocolate, because of the caffeine, can sometimes be an issue.
Eating a lot of spicy food is also irritating, so try to cut back on those
things. Now, does that mean you should stop drinking water? Absolutely not.
You want to drink plenty of water because the water needs to flush through the
bladder to keep the bladder functioning normally. Without enough water you
actually can cause the opposite problem and end up with a urinary tract
infection. So you don't want that. So drink a lot of water, and also if you're
looking for other things that are good for the bladder: cranberry juice is good
as well as lemonade.
Another tip to help control your
incontinence is to lose weight. Additional weight on the bladder puts a
lot of pressure on it and it loosens the pelvic floor. So whether you're pregnant
and then you eventually lose weight, the pelvic floor is obviously been
weakened to a degree. And the same thing happens with people who are obese. So I
highly suggest losing weight.
Did you know there are exercises you can do to
improve incontinence? There's an exercise called a kegel. I'm and explain to you
what kegels are. Kegels are a pelvic floor exercise where you squeeze the
pelvic floor and you release it. It's just a gentle squeeze and release. Now, if
you're wondering where that muscle is, you find it when you're using the
restroom and you have a flow of urine coming down and you stop in the middle.
That squeezing that you're doing is the muscle that we're talking about. So what
you want to do on a daily basis is do those kegels about 50 times a day to
increase the strength of that muscle, and that will help you control your bladder.
If you can't figure out how to do that exercise, please check with your doctor
or your health care provider.
Okay, let's talk about a common problem:
leakage. So I'm going to talk about what you need to do to diagnose the situation.
First of all, if you're using pads or a pull-up, it might be time to graduate to
a full brief. A full brief will hold 1800 ml's of liquid. That's a full void. So if
you're going to go into this product, the next thing you want to check is that you
have the right size. If you don't size it correctly, it will not work. Here's an
example based on height and weight of the size that you should consider, and
you can find a link to this chart below the video. Remember, if you think that a
larger size is going to absorb more, consider that the gathers around the leg
here, and notice they have the elastic gathers, when you put that around the leg
it's going to be way too loose. So now I'm going to have hang-age here where the
urine is going to run right down your leg. that will cause definite leakage.
So make sure you have the right size. Once you do have the right size and you
still experience some leakage, you may be voiding more than once into the brief,
and these aren't really designed for that. So then you may want to consider
putting a booster inside the brief, especially at night. So these are
boosters. These boosters have no plastic on the back - they do have an adhesive to
hold it in place and they're pretty, pretty thick -- okay this one's a little
thinner, but remember, these have polymer which absorb quite a bit. So you would
place this inside of the brief, and then put the brief on as you normally would.
Keep in mind, it's gonna weigh a lot when you take it off with that extra
absorbency. If you're a caregiver and you'd like instructions on how to change
your loved ones brief, we have a full video on that. You'll find it in the link below.
Are you embarrassed about being incontinent? No, you shouldn't be, because
nowadays we are all living longer and as we live longer,
sometimes these complications come up. And it's totally acceptable to talk to
your friends or family about it, and especially your healthcare provider.
Did you know that UTIs are very common with incontinent patients? Especially if
they're bedridden. What is a UTI? A UTI is a urinary tract
infection, meaning that the bladder is now irritated and there's bacteria
that's entered. How does that happen? Well, first of all, if your loved one is not
drinking enough water, they're susceptible to getting a UTI, because the
urine may become super concentrated and it's not being flushed out on a regular
basis. If you notice dark yellow urine, that means there's a possibility there's
a UTI. Another way is through cleanliness. If the patient is having any
contamination of feces into the urinary tract, that, too, will cause a UTI. How do
you solve a UTI? You want to contact your doctor and healthcare professional.
Most of the time antibiotics are required.
If you have further questions, check out our
incontinence community on our website, also you can order our free Living Well
with Incontinence booklet for further information.
Thank you for watching.
Stay tuned for more videos from Shield HealthCare.