Women & Incontinence

Incontinence occurs when a person loses the ability to control urination or bowel movements, says MedlinePlus. Women can experience both types of incontinence as a result of pregnancy and childbirth.

Urinary Incontinence

• Stress incontinence occurs when you laugh or cough. Urge incontinence happens when you feel a sudden need to urinate followed by bladder leakage. When your bladder fills up and urine spills out of it, it is called overflow incontinence, says the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Bowel Incontinence

• According to MedlinePlus, bowel incontinence can be minor, involving an occasional leak of stool and gas or it can be total with all control of bowel movements lost.

Significance

• Urinary incontinence occurs in women twice as often as it does in men. According to the National Institutes of Health, thirteen out of every thousand women report experiencing bowel incontinence.

Causes

• Urinary incontinence in women can be caused by childbirth, which weakens pelvic and sphincter muscles. Bowel incontinence can be caused by damage to rectal muscles during childbirth or during gynecological surgery.

Treatments

• Urinary incontinence can be treated with Kegel exercises to strengthen pelvic muscles. Bladder and bowel retraining can reduce incontinence. Medications to improve intestinal function can help with bowel incontinence, as can surgery to repair a damaged rectal sphincter.