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The Difference Between Stress and Urge Incontinence
Hi, I’m Tasha Mulligan, a physical therapist. The symptoms of incontinence can vary from person to person. Some may experience minor leakage every once in a while, while others may experience complete loss of bladder control daily. There are also different types of incontinence, the two most common being urge and stress incontinence. Let’s take a closer look at the differences between these two types of incontinence.
We’ll begin by defining stress incontinence. This is the involuntary loss of urine as a result to increased, inter-abdominal pressure with activities such as laughing, coughing, sneezing or jumping. And to define urge incontinence, it’s the involuntary loss of urine following a sudden, unexpected urge to urinate due to involuntary bladder contractions. Although the end result of these two types of incontinence are the same, and that’s involuntary loss of urine, there are many differences between stress and urge incontinence.
The first difference that we will highlight is the cause. Stress incontinence is caused by distinct action that increases our inter-abdominal pressure causing urine leakage whereas, urge incontinence is unexpected and unpredictable with no distinct cause. Another difference is that stress incontinence is a result of inefficient firing of our pelvic floor muscles. This means that we can’t get our pelvic floor muscles to fire as quick as we need them to and as strong as we need them to whereas, urge incontinence is due to involuntary contractions of our bladder. These are contractions that we cannot stop.
A final difference between stress and urge incontinence is in the treatment of these two types of incontinence. Stress incontinence is most often treated with pelvic floor muscle training and strengthening exercises whereas, urge incontinence is most often treated with a combination therapy of medication, bladdery training, as well as pelvic floor muscle strengthening.
And that’s how I see it as an expert on incontinence. But I also recommend that you reach out to your doctor for more details or go to Google and type in “Types of Incontinence” for more information. Thanks for watching.
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