Urge incontinence

I started taking Jude supplements almost 3 months ago and have found that after about 6 to 8 weeks there was an improvement. Not cheap, but at less than £1 /day I feel it's worth it. Using vaginal oestrogen too.

HRT patches
Estriol cream, followed by urology consultation and scan. Advice to:
reduce caffeine, especially in the evening
lose weight
stop going "just in case" and straining bladder muscles to empty
Follow up prescribed Mirabegron (wonder drug)

Offer to refer to gynae for injections to help with stress incontinence (coughing)

I wrote "holding the breath" , The general idea is to keep the diaphragm still. So use of intercostal muscles not diaphragm for breathing can help much like as in labour the midwife tells you take short breaths , or pant like a dog, to inhibit the urge to let it all come out.

Holding the breath helps a little with urge incontinence, I will try Cariad's acupressure point thanks Cariad,

Coffee is very diuretic.

So - yep....my own personal planning if I were that agegroup and wanted a child would include being in a private hospital to do so or one of those doulas maybe they talk about. I can see that the first yells anyone would hear in an NHS hospital would be along the lines of "What do you mean I have to share MY midwife with other women too? Why? Ain't happening...." - as I gather women of an earlier decade had a midwife that was just "theirs".

Susieq62

Cariadagain
Hysterectomy due to cancer ! Natural child birth !

Ah - I understand now....it was feeling confused.

...and I understand the latter point on women having worse circumstances now re childbirth. I think my mother was in hospital for what coulda been up to 2 weeks/was certainly at least one week and I gather a week was the norm in the 1950s.

Never had/never wanted children - but even I can see it sounds like hard work to me to have a pregnancy for 9 months, then give birth (by whichever method it turns out to be) and, if it's the first one there's also learning how-to - and yet they kick women out in two seconds flat from what I can see these days. The worst I've heard was a young woman had just had a child (think it was her first at that) and they were literally trying to tell her to get out of bed and go the night after she'd given birth!!!!! They wanted to deliberately wake her up and send her packing literally hours after that birth!!!! Fortunately for her she was a strong enough person that she told them where to get off and refused to get disturbed in the middle of the night and to leave her alone. I was gobsmacked to hear someone had been treated that way.

Cariad, what do you mean by ‘giving birth by hysterectomy’. Do you mean vaginal delivery?
I had better maternal care in the seventies and eighties than my daughters and their friends did in the past ten years.

Austerity and neglect of public services has caused much damage

Cariadagain
Hysterectomy due to cancer ! Natural child birth !

Susieq62

I have a vaginal
Prolapse due to cervical cancer and hysterectomy after child birth so nothing to hold up the muscle!! So I have an issue but saw a consultant ( best £250 spent) who prescribed oestrogen plus the Squeezy App which I do at breakfast , lunch and dinner 😂
I also do Pilates for core strength ! I am 75 and all these help tbh!
Good luck

That's got me wondering - ie you mentioning a hysterectomy - wonder whether a noticeable number of younger women that have had children are now lined-up for that sort of issue when they get older! - ie because they decided to give birth by hysterectomy.

Doesn't apply to me - as I didn't want and therefore didn't have children anyway. But it does have me wondering whether that's another thing to go on the list of "What women should be told before they make a decision as to whether to get pregnant or no".

I've felt sorry for women in our agegroup that have gone ahead and decided to get pregnant anyway - because of all the stuff they should have been told about pregnancy, childbirth, aftermath of childbirth and I don't recall anyone telling us anything much when I was in the relevant agegroup. We needed to know any after-effects before we decided to get pregnant and not after we already had - so we had full information to make our "to have a baby or not to have a baby - that is the question" decision.

I don't know whether girls are told these facts at school - in plenty of time before they make their "child or no" decisions. But in our era they basically weren't and I got the impression other women never did let on to them until it was too late.

I know I'd have felt betrayed by schools/other women if I'd decided to get pregnant, had the child and come up with a resultant health problem that was noticeably common and no-one ever told me there was a risk of that before I made my decision.

Try and find a physio who specialises in ladies issues. I found this an enormous help when I was diagnosed with a stage 1 prolapse which caused leakage.
She had specialist equipment and was able to suggest the best targeted exercises. It was worth every penny.

I have a vaginal
Prolapse due to cervical cancer and hysterectomy after child birth so nothing to hold up the muscle!! So I have an issue but saw a consultant ( best £250 spent) who prescribed oestrogen plus the Squeezy App which I do at breakfast , lunch and dinner 😂
I also do Pilates for core strength ! I am 75 and all these help tbh!
Good luck

MrsHappy

I am suffering very badly with urge incontinence. I am at the point I can rarely get to the toilet without not just leaking, but letting go. It's costing me a fortune in pads!!
Does anyone have experience of this and is there a cure?

I recently plucked up courage to see the doctor, he gave me some tiny pills which seem to have solved the problem. I went out in not black jeans yesterday with no issues!

I phoned the gyneourology team as instructed if I’d not heard from them following my September referral. I was told it’s a twelve month wait

Thank you everyone. Looks like a trip to the doctor and urinary clinic.

I have a rebounder. It sounds unlikely, but since I have started to use it, the urge has gone!

When I had this problem, a few years ago, my GP prescribed Oxybutynin patches. They're a bit like HRT patches that you stick at the top of your leg. It took a few months but really worked. Urge incontinence is more about your brain re-learning the signals that you need to go. I was also told that, when at home, I shouldn't go to the loo as soon as I felt the urge but to wait a few minutes as this also tells the brain it is OK to wait. As others have said, you need a diagnosis as different types of incontinence need to be treated differently.

I was recently diagnosed with urge incontinence by my doctor. He explained this is due to a problem with my muscles and is not related to the pelvic floor, which is why the kegel exercises I was doing weren’t helping. He has prescribed some medication (Tolterodine) which is definitely working for me. That’s why it’s important to know the difference between the various types of incontinence.

Please try local Oestrogen : Vagifem Pessaries or Oestriol cream. You use every night for 2 weeks, and then twice weekly. Definitely will improve any urinary symptoms and prevent UTI s. Look up Genito urinary syndrome of the menopause. Most GP’s are much more aware of the benefits these days. It is not the same as systemic HRT and you can use it for the rest of your life, and it can be used even if you’ve had breast or gynae cancer.

Is oestrogen cream more effective than a pessary twice a week?

I am the exact same, im fed up of waking up and knowing im in a puddle. I too spend a fortune on tena lady pads and even the maxi night dont hold it in. I'm onto my 3rd try of tablets. I've been taking jude about 5 months now. I've used vagifem for 10 years. I seen countless doctors and am waiting for an appointment with the woman's physio.
I tried drinking very very little after 6pm and always ended up getting a pounding dehydration headache at 5am the next morning.
Im embarrassed by it and really dont know where to turn. My gp, various ones, seem at a loss.
This started at menopause, im way by that now. I feel its hormonal but hrt patches did nothing.
Im actually in despair now.
Im in utt

Rocketstop I have had breast cancer but two doctors assured me oestrogen cream is completely safe. It has improved my life completely. Urge incontinence is terrible. I used to wake up at night thinking I have got to go to the loo. As soon as I had moved,I had soaked myself. I just urge people to consult their doctor.

jools1

Some of these replies seem more about dealing stress incontinence rather than urge incontinence - a very different thing! MrsHappy - I suffer too from urge incontinence and it is a nightmare and can really affect going on day trips and holidays. I've been told it is more about the brain giving the wrong message and somehow you have to switch off that part of the brain by thinking of something else! I don't really understand this but, like you, would welcome any practical advice

I can feel another google coming on - asking about that. It's a problem I had back before in my 30's and got rid of it then. There was a LOT of stress then - I was born a home-owner as I put it and I still hadnt got one/couldnt see how to do so as a single person and was having an enormous amount of stress with my employer (which lasted all the way through from my 30's until the blessed relief of retirement at 60).

Maybe one of those factors being removed - ie basically I had succeeded in visualising my way through to a highly unusual method of buying a home a couple of years later - so didnt have loads of anger being stuck in rented accommodation to deal with any longer. It was 10 years late - but I'd found a way to get one. So that anger had been resolved - by success on that.

KGee

You need to ask your doctor for vaginal oestrogen either pessary or cream this will improve not only the vagina but also the urethra and greatly improve your symptoms. All women can use it whether or not you’ve been on HRT. Pelvic floor exercises will also help and request a referral to physio if needed. You will see an improvement within 2-3 weeks of using the vaginal oestrogen cream. No need to suffer in silence like most women do! Good Luck!

Good advice, but I have to say that 'Not all women' can use it, you cannot if you've had cancer.

yogitree

CariadAgain

There is an acupressure point - so I gather - just underneath the nose. It's in between the bottom of the nostrils and the top of the upper lip. In that groove beneath the nostrils. I gather one presses firmly on it to give the message to your body of "You can stop that right now - and wait until I am ready".

HTH.

Ooo! You give me hope, I will try this!

Might as well - it costs nowt.

Though I'm off to see a 5 Elements acupuncturist soon for "everything that's wrong with my body" and I have a list - in order of priority. Not seen one of that type before and she assures me it's possible to do acupuncture with acupressure rather than needles (as it's very rare for me to let anyone anywhere near me with a needle - and it has to be absolutely necessary from my pov) and she's got a couple of other methods up her sleeve too. I'm willing to try a lot of different therapies personally if I think there's a reasonable chance they'll do the trick - though I wince at the cost of the "NHS bills" as I call them (as in we're supposed to have an NHS - but I land up paying...). I've covered the "what element are you?" out of the 5 possible elements already in a Chat GPT questionnaire - wood predominates by a long shot in me - and errrm....yep....another well-known Wood person is Margaret Thatcher......LOL.

That sounds logical to me - as there was one illness that went on for years and stopped at menopause on the list of what Wood people are prone to - so that's one less on the list (which is 10 items long - after me getting shot of two off that list so far). Good job Wood people are determined...

I meant it works in that the desire to wee goes away, as I couldn't possibly meet Her Majesty busting for the loo!