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Uro-gynecology The non-surgical approach includes lifestyle modification, bladder retraining, pelvic floor muscle exercises with or without biofeedback, and electrical stimulation. Lifestyle Modification: General health habits affect how our bladders work. The food and drink we take in, our bowel habits, exercise habits/fitness, sleep habits, and work habits, can contribute to bladder problems. Lifestyle modification refers to working on these health habits. Bladder Retraining: Our bodies respond to routine and routine can help our bladder as well. Bladder training refers to the process of re-establishing good voiding habits. This process usually begins by keeping a log or diary of your voiding or bladder emptying for several days. This log will show your minimum, maximum, and averaging voiding intervals. Setting up a regular voiding schedule is the next step. By voiding on a regular schedule, you can help to retrain your bladder. This process may also include learning ways to quiet urges and delay urinating. Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises: The muscles that span the base of our pelvis from the pubic bone to the tailbone form the "floor of the pelvis". They are muscles that can be strengthened and conditioned like any other skeletal muscle in our body. Pelvic floor muscle exercises, also called Kegel's exercises, will be most beneficial if they are specific and graduated. Just as we improve any motor skill with practice (like learning to drive, for instance), correctly practicing pelvic floor muscle activity will condition these muscles to effectively do their job. Biofeedback: Efforts to use and control our muscles are improved when we are given information about how we are doing. Adding biofeedback to an exercise program includes the use of sensors that read pelvic muscle activity and either on a computer or a pressure dial, indicate changes in muscle contracting and relaxing. This feedback information can guide muscle effort and control. Electrical Stimulation: The use of a therapeutic electrical current has been part of health care for hundreds of years. A comfortable, therapeutic current can activate nerves and/or muscles to produce a contraction of the pelvic floor muscles that a woman may not have the strength to do on her own. The stimulation can help to provide both a muscle contraction as well as sensory information to increase awareness of location and function of her muscle. This in turn will help her ability to contract and exercise the muscle on her own. |
