Bladder training is a useful tool when coping with urinary incontinence. Urinary incontinence means that you have trouble controlling when you urinate, and is often caused by weak pelvic muscles, build up of stools in the bowels, or a side effect from taking certain medications.

Urinary incontinence can also happen when you have medical conditions such as diabetes or congestive heart failure. There are many people who suffer from the discomfort of not being able to control their passing of urine, in fact about 12 million people in America alone suffer from it, the main sufferers are women over the age of 50. Although anyone regardless of age or gender can suffer from urinary incontinence. T

here are four main types of urinary incontinence; these are stress incontinence, urge incontinence, overflow incontinence, or functional incontinence. Can Bladder training help? Bladder training is a technique used to help people who suffer from stress incontinence, urge incontinence or mixed incontinence, which can be a combination of the two.

Stress incontinence happens when urine escapes because the person has put pressure on their lower tummy muscles. Often coughing, sneezing, laughing, or lifting something heavy can trigger stress incontinence Urge incontinence is when the need to go to the toilet comes on very suddenly, and you don’t have enough warning to get to the bathroom. By visiting your doctor, you can discuss the type of symptoms that you have and your doctor can tell you the type of urine incontinence you have and if bladder training will help you.

What bladder training will do is give you more time between trips to the bathroom, by increasing the amount of urine that the bladder can hold. Bladder training will also improve the control that you have over your urge to urinate. Your doctor will be able to put you onto a bladder control program. Firstly, you will need to keep track of how many times, and how much urine is passed in a 24-hour period.

You may also have to keep track of how many leaks that you have during the day; through the program, this will give you an idea of how well bladder training is working for you.

Depending on the type of urinary incontinence you suffer from, your doctor may put you on one of a few training programs including strengthening exercises, slowly increasing the amount of time between trips to the bathroom, until you only need to urinate every 4-5 hours, or by placing you on a scheduled bathroom trip program.

Bladder training will usually take up to 12 weeks for you to get the desired results, but in the end, it will be worth it. Other ways to help with your bladder training is to change your diet. Some things in your diet such as spicy foods, alcohol, or caffeine can irritate your bladder, by avoiding these foods, you can get better results faster from your bladder training program.