The unfortunate reality is you can leak urine and not know it. Here is why.
Most often this happens for people who are already leaking with stress incontinence or urge urinary incontinence. They are already wearing pads and don't feel the urine leaks.
If you're wearing a pad, leaking and not knowing it, you are not feeling the wetness. That means your pad is working, but wouldn’t you rather not need the pad in the first place? With the pad, there is pressure on the bladder leading to the bladder leaks, but the pad is drying up any wetness and you do not know that you have leaked urine. This is the kind of a situation where you want to get checked out by your doctor to make sure there is nothing wrong physiologically or neurologically. If nothing is wrong, then we need to focus on your strengthening your pelvic floor muscles.
Treatment for Leaking Urine after Urination
Being overweight, or having too much mass around your stomach, is a common reason for leaking urine and not knowing it. As you walk around or move around, excess weight on your abdomen puts pressure on the muscles of your pelvic floor; commonly it is too much weight for your pelvic floor muscles to handle. This leads to urine leaks without you realizing it. Just like we can strengthen other muscles, we are going to have to strengthen our pelvic floor muscles. Weight loss is also going to be helpful in this situation.
If you are not wearing pads and you're having urine leaks that you can't feel, you may have poor sensation in your pelvic area. In that case, I encourage you to see your medical doctor to make sure there isn't anything wrong.
Multiple sclerosis is a common reason that leaking urine without realizing it might happen especially if you are not already wearing a pad. This is often due to a loss of sensation, but if we know that you have multiple sclerosis, then we can focus on other things to improve your control over your pelvic floor muscles. Generally, patients who see a pelvic floor physical therapist already have a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis before they seek treatment for incontinence, and it is still very treatable.
-Dr. Lauren Collier Peterson, PT, DPT
FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers of Oklahoma City provides pelvic floor physical therapy in Lakeside, The Village, Nichols Hills and surrounding NW Oklahoma City. Our pelvic floor physical therapists are specially trained to treat all types of pelvic floor dysfunction including incontinence in men and women. Our practitioners take a patient-centered individualized approach that focuses on your pelvic health needs. If you are unsure about your pelvic health, or you want to see the FYZICAL Difference for yourself, schedule a free consultation today.
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