How does bladder weakness manifest itself?
Bladder weakness is not dangerous, but restricts the everyday life of those affected enormously, since the search for the next quiet place dominates. A visit to the theater or bus rides? This is an absolute challenge for many women with bladder weakness.
Bladder weakness can manifest itself in different forms:
- Stress incontinence: Involuntary leakage of urine when pressure is applied to the lower abdomen. This happens, for example, during physical exertion such as jumping, sneezing or climbing stairs.
- Urge incontinence: Unintentional leakage of urine occurs despite people experiencing a sudden and strong urge to urinate, even if the bladder is not overly full. Small amounts of urine can therefore already trigger a strong urge to urinate.
- Overflow incontinence: The feeling of not being able to empty the bladder.
Why do women struggle with bladder weakness during menopause
Middle-aged women can develop bladder weakness for a variety of reasons, so it is usually a combination of different factors. With the menopause, the hormonal balance of women changes. What does that mean specifically? Estrogen and progesterone levels drop.
Such ups and downs in hormones have a variety of effects on the body – and accordingly on the bladder. The lack of estrogen weakens the connective tissue, the sphincter and the pelvic floor muscles, which also become weaker with age. The consequence? A prolapse of the bladder and uterus, which also promotes bladder weakness. In addition, a falling estrogen level contributes to the urinary tract to the bladder being less well supplied with blood and the mucous membranes becoming thinner. The risk of infections such as cystitis also increases.
What helps against bladder weakness during menopause?
There are different approaches to treat bladder weakness. The therapy depends on the corresponding causes, the degree of severity and the type of incontinence. First of all, you should visit your gynecologist or urologist and get professional advice.
One of the most important measures is strengthening the pelvic floor. With targeted exercises you train the muscles of your pelvic floor. So-called bladder training can also be advisable. It can help improve bladder control. They learn to delay going to the toilet and not to give in directly to the urge to urinate.
If there is urge incontinence, drug treatment can be useful in addition to bladder training. Your doctor will prescribe so-called anticholinergics, which inhibit the body’s own messenger substance acetylcholine and cause the bladder to relax.
Hormone replacement therapy is often used when it comes to relieving menopausal symptoms. As the name suggests, women take hormone preparations. Hormone replacement therapy is considered controversial because it increases the risk of breast cancer and thrombosis. It is therefore best to seek advice from your gynecologist as to whether such therapy is an option for you or not.
More about this here: Frequent urges to urinate during menopause: What women can do >>
How to prevent a weak bladder during menopause
Basically, a healthy and balanced lifestyle is the basis for a menopause that is as carefree as possible. Try to avoid being overweight, because the extra pounds put pressure on the bladder. Regular bladder training can also prevent incontinence. It’s important to neither overstress nor understress the bladder when going to the bathroom. In other words, don’t wait too long to go to the bathroom, but don’t urinate too often either. When the bladder is overfilled, it can cause muscles to become overstretched over the long term. On the other hand, frequent urination can result in even a small amount of urine causing a strong urge to urinate.