Reducing Bladder Leakage With an At-Home Therapy

urinary incontinence or the loss of bladder control affects about 78 million women in america although it is a very common problem it is not considered medically normal and that means it isn't something that we as women should just have to live with today understanding the symptoms of female incontinence and an innovative approach to managing your pelvic health i'm erica vitrini access health starts now [Music] for some of us it happens when we sneeze or laugh for others it can keep them up at night and then there are those who can't quite make it to the restroom in time we're talking about urinary incontinence and up to 60 of women will have ui at some time in our lives my first guest today is a board certified gynecologist with gaia wellness dr shweta patel welcome and thank you for joining us thank you for having me erica okay so let's get right in what exactly is urinary incontinence and what causes it so urinary incontinence is involuntary loss of urinary control in other words when you're not trying to pee and you pee and it usually has to do with weakened pelvic muscles this can happen because of several things and at any phase in a woman's life but usually it's a result of childbearing pregnancy-related trauma it can also happen due to aging it can happen due to hormonal changes in a woman's life such as in menopause and it can also happen due to other health conditions that can affect a woman's neurological system we can pelvic floor muscles unfortunately not all of us know our anatomy as well as we should what are our pelvic floor muscles so our pelvic floor is um a converge of three very large pelvic floor muscles um if you were to think of our pelvis as like a house which houses our uterus and our bladder which is on in the front of our uterus and all the other structures like ovaries are fallipian tubes but they're all nicely and securely put in to our pelvis with the foundation being made out of our pelvic floor muscles um so having strong pelvic floor muscles is comparable to having a strong foundation in your house so doctor as we mentioned at the top of the show urinary incontinence is a very common women's health condition but it's not something that we have to learn to live with correct it is a very common condition and i think unfortunately it's become common and normalized in that women have just started to see it as something we we deal with we see our you know our mothers our grandmothers living with it and it's not something we feel is abnormal per se and even though it is absolutely treatable we just don't bring it up and as a result it's common but not very much known about so doctor right after giving birth to my daughter i did indeed experience ui and i know how it impacted my life from what you've seen how can it impact women's lives it has far-reaching effects on a woman's life in terms of just in general it's not a life-threatening condition but urinary incontinence can be a very quality of life compromising condition you know women can be affected emotionally in that how they're going to interact with their friends what social events what activities physically what exercises they feel comfortable doing all of that can be impacted by having urinary incontinence doctor we have so much more to talk about but first we're going to take a little break and hear from kim mears about her experience with ui take a look well my name is kim i'm 66 years old i'm retired as far as hobbies i do yoga five days a week i swim daily i love to read and i have two dogs they're both australian shepherds red and ruby they love the park and we enjoy our time together probably in my late 50s early 60s i started to notice a bit of a problem with bladder leakage even with a maxi pad it was still leaking through sometimes to my clothing i was having to do laundry and panties and everything on a daily basis and i knew you know at that point i had to do something my dogs even noticed the difference we used to go to the dock park for at least an hour each day and they looked forward to that and i had to start shortening the trips because there were no restrooms at the dock park i remember one particular situation my granddaughter and i were on a car trip together and we needed to make a pit stop and there was only one stall available now me being the grandmother i obviously felt like i should let my young granddaughter go first that wasn't going to happen i had to explain to her that mimi has to go first and i realized in that moment that i had really lost control of the situation and that i needed to find a solution to this problem [Music] urinary incontinence affects more women than men and is one of the most under-diagnosed and under-treated conditions in women's health today dr patel why is that well i think a lot of it has to do with how comfortable women feel about addressing or even bringing it up with their doctors i think 25 of women who actually have urinary incontinence do something about it which is such a low number when you think about it and the average amount of time it takes for a woman to even address her concerns is about six and a half years from when she first starts experiencing these symptoms i know it's very unfortunate and i think a lot of it has to do not just with how it has become normalized but also i think we as physicians aren't doing necessarily our best in terms of addressing it or bringing it up and making it a conversation that's easy to have and then on top of that it's embarrassing for women to bring this up some women think that it might not even be something they can have fixed or know about the various options that they can actually consider some might think that the treatments are a little bit more complicated than they are and so i think a combination of all of that brings into play why it's under diagnosed and i will say too if it if it's happening right after childbirth your focus is not on yourself true and often on this child you just gave birth to motherhood exactly motherhood and all that it is um but it's important for the doctors to bring it up i think absolutely so we hear urinary incontinence talked about in a lot of different ways we hear leaky bladder over active ladder what's the difference so i think the best way to distinguish the two would be a leaky bladder is where you're actually losing control over urine as opposed to an overactive bladder where you're feeling the urge to go frequently and we can further divide a leaky bladder into stress urinary incontinence and urge urinary incontinence and stress urinary incontinence is where you are leaking because of increased physical stress that your bladder is not able to compensate for think of sneezing laughing coughing jumping physical exertion in the pandemic with a lot of patients having covet and coughing a lot we've seen a lot of an increase in that as well urge incontinence would be more of the commercial that you see when you're like gotta go gotta go um when you feel the urge to urinate but you can't actually make it in time before leaking to the bathroom all of those can actually come together into a picture with that we call mixed urinary incontinence so doctor are there particular risk factors absolutely um so outside of being a woman it's funny how men don't have to deal with this as much i would say but being a woman child bearing and trauma related with childbearing even pregnancy itself and the stretching of your pelvic muscles related to the growing child inside can add to that but then having a long traumatic birthing experience can also compromise your pelvic floor age as we mentioned and menopause hormonal changes that can again affect the overall integrity of our muscles and then of course there are other risk factors like neurological conditions that can compromise how our brain communicates with our bladder and our muscles so interesting and so ultimately how is a woman diagnosed and what doctor should she see so really as physicians or healthcare providers anyone can be the first line in detecting this concern in a woman by simply just asking the question i think that women are still becoming more comfortable with bringing topics like this up and so being the the initiator of the conversation can definitely be very helpful whether you're a family medicine practitioner or a gynecologist in fact you don't even have to go to the office for it even a telehealth consult currently with the pandemic sometimes access to care can be difficult but you can still have this diagnosed just by speaking with a physician and not having a physical exam and at that point i think just from a physician's perspective or a generalist doctor's perspective if a woman is complaining of having these concerns referring her to a urogynecologist would probably be my next step um so as to make sure that she gets the appropriate care that she needs i mean this is such good information i think just having the knowledge to know that it's not something we have to live with it's so important doctor thank you so much for being here today when we come back we'll take a look at an innovative new technology first approach to treating urinary incontinence i was completely soaked i was like okay something's obviously happening like i'm i'm leaking but i didn't immediately want to call the doctor because i had heard that this is what happens to a lot of women there was shame that i didn't have control over my body i didn't know when it was going to happen it could happen at any time and it kind of kept me from doing everyday things and i always had to have a pat on leakage was actually it was robbing me of moments and then my mom told me that it's happened to almost all of my aunts and everyone just kept telling me you know this is common this is common this is normal this is what happens and then i finally realized just because it's common doesn't mean that it's normal [Music] [Music] my next guest has spent over 20 years as a practicing ob gyn she is a board-certified urogynecologist with a clinical focus on urinary incontinence welcome dr pulliam thank you so much for joining us thank you happy to be here so let's talk about the options for treatment when it comes to ui yeah so urinary incontinence there are lots of different treatments and they range from very simple things in some cases and also much more complicated things and really the basic idea is that you start with the simple and move on to the more complicated and more risky if you need them so things that would be in the more complicated or more risky category include things like medications which have side effects or surgery which has potential complications and both of those things work but it's better to do the less risky things first and that is usually behavioral therapies behavioral theory so these are things that we can take on ourselves and and can you describe a few of those sure um there are a lot of them um some of them involve modifications of your of your diet or fluid intake such as cutting down on caffeine or alcohol or making sure you drink an appropriate amount of water a day not too much and not too little another one is weight loss and a third one might be bladder training where you help your bladder get used to voiding less and less frequently over time and then a final would be pelvic floor muscle exercises you're referring to kegels i am yes yeah we i think we've all heard of kegels i don't think that um enough of us actually practice them or maybe don't really understand how important they are in the long term um can you talk to that a bit kegels in some ways are a big mystery and in fact i think a lot of women know they ought to be doing them but they don't in fact only about a quarter of women who should be doing them because of a pelvic floor problem like urinary incontinence actually do them and of that group only about a quarter of them do it effectively enough to achieve the results they're looking for for example treatment of urinary incontinence so when we're talking about doing them effectively is the point is for us to just create strength on that pelvic floor right strength and endurance so the pelvic floor as we discussed previously are sort of a basket of muscles inside the bony part of the pelvis and when you contract them they should lift and also move all of the organs in the pelvis we're talking about the bladder here towards the pubic bone or towards the front of the body and so strengthening those muscles allows them to do that more effectively and efficiently and with greater strength such good information i wish that i had this information when i was having children we have to take a quick break dr pulliam you're going to stay with us and when we come back we're going to discuss an at-home system that in just a few minutes a day can help you get closer to living without leaks [Music] welcome back according to the american academy of family physicians conservative therapies are recommended as a first-line treatment for ui this includes pelvic floor muscle exercises and joining me now are kim mears anna gannon and of course dr pulliam thank you so much for sticking around anna kim we heard earlier about your challenges with ui but but tell us a little bit more about your experiences and your diagnosis anna sure yeah mine started right after i had my second child i went through postpartum and i was having minor leaks as that occurred but about three weeks postpartum i decided to throw a party so everyone could meet my baby uh which seemed like a good idea but that wasn't and during that time i had a major leak and when that happened it was just full stop i was really concerned because i'm a yoga instructor as you know and i run for my mental health and i just knew that if this was going to be an issue i needed to get it taken care of right away so i called the doctor the next morning i wasn't going to wait i love it you took action and kim how about you well i actually began experiencing issues 10 years ago it was minor leakage and in talking with friends and even other family members i realized that just seemed to be part of getting older so i tried to band-aid the problem together by wearing you know panty liners but as time progressed it kept getting heavier it kept interrupting with my daily life i mean you know when you walk into a store the first thing i did was i sought out where's the nearest restroom had to cut short a lot of visits go to lunch with you know a group of friends after maybe the second or third you know i'm sorry i need to make a quick pit stop you just kind of start to retreat and you just find yourself kind of isolating actually and i knew that i needed to do something to gain control back and dr pulliam i understand that you've brought a system with you today that can help strengthen pelvic floor muscles and can reduce the symptoms of ui that's right i have the leva pelvic health system this is a wand here it's a small wand so the wand is placed in the vagina and it's used actually for two and a half minutes twice a day you can see what happens when you lift the pelvic floor muscles and you lift and hold the app and the wand are then used in conjunction with what we call the leva women's center this is a group of dedicated coaches that will work with women all the way through their treatment for about 12 weeks as they begin to see improvement many women see improvement as early as four weeks but the program goes for 12 weeks so that we can ensure that everyone gets the maximum improvement out of the experience um so i have to ask the question i think i know the answer does it work so it does and actually we've just completed a randomized controlled trial a clinical research study uh looking at use of the leva as compared to doing pelvic floor muscle exercises at home on your own and what we found was that leva was superior in terms of symptom improvement and also that leva reduced the number of incontinence episodes in a day from about two episodes every day to one episode every three days and how long does it usually take to start see results um many women see results within four weeks we offer a 12-week program ladies i want to hear from you so how was it kim how was your experience that it worked for you i began to see results within the first two weeks it wasn't anything major at first but i knew something was happening and it was so encouraging and i said it gives you visual real-time feedback so you know that you're doing the kegel properly and it's going to be effective i would say within four weeks i was throwing the panty liners and pads out the window i love that so much it's true when you can see that you're working and it's it's actually working and you're it's effective incredible and how about you anna yeah i mean i i loved it right away just because i was a postpartum mom so i really thought that i was either going to have to go to physical therapy or i was going to have to get surgery to worst-case scenario but using the leva i had the coach which we've talked about that home coach that kept me accountable for everything and when i used it i just immediately started to see results within a few weeks and when i the first time i used it it was like really low on the barometer as you'll see on the scale and i could see how just how weak my pelvic floor muscles were from having a baby and it was just a few weeks later that all of a sudden i was stronger and it was amazing i stopped leaking full three weeks into treatment incredible so doctor are there any risks so the only risks with leva come with improper use so proper use involves keeping the leva clean not sharing leva and also working in conjunction with your with your doctor so if you found that you were pregnant you should stop using leva and reach out to your physician for instructions i think this is such good news for so many people out there doctor where can we go to get more information so one thing you can do is approach your physician and ask them if they think you're a good candidate for liva also you can contact our leva women's center and the educators there can give you more information and and more information about how to contact them you can see on our website which is leave a therapy.com dr ladies thank you so much for joining us today and sharing your stories i know it's going to make a big difference to a lot of women out there and for more information on today's discussion you can always visit our website at accesshealth.tv see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Access Health

Views: 25,838

Keywords: access health, lifetime television, nutrition, health, medical, fitness, Ereka Vetrini

Id: is9qVpD_CRs

Length: 20min 10sec (1210 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022