A wet patch, or urinary incontinence
It’s a taboo topic. We’re ashamed to talk about it among ourselves. We don’t even admit it to doctors. Yet the problem affects the health and quality of life of as many as one in three of us. In its early stages, you can address it naturally by activating tissue regeneration processes.
Consultation: Dr. Rafał Kużalik, PhD (Medical Sciences)
We usually associate urinary incontinence with someone forced to wear diapers, often confined to bed. Meanwhile, the problem affects a very large group of women of different ages.
This text is for you if:
- You sometimes hesitate over whether you can wear a thong for fear that a wet spot will appear on your pants from laughing, lifting heavy objects, or sneezing.
- If you have asthma and, during flare-ups, you have experienced embarrassing situations and feel safe only with a liner.
- If you have to ‘protect yourself’ in order to jump on a trampoline . From my observations, I know this applies to 100% of about 30 acquaintances who are over 30, regardless of whether they have given birth or not. Gynecologists even speak of a trampoline test. In my opinion, 100% of adult women fail it. Only in the case of teenagers and very young women before their first pregnancy can we say that leaking even a few drops of urine is not within the norm.
- If after pregnancy and childbirth you experience discomfort related to uncontrolled urine leakage that does not go away after the postpartum period.
To specify whether everything is within the norm and it’s only a temporary indisposition, or whether it is worth taking action now, even as a preventive measure, you can perform more precise tests, the so-called droplet tests.
When the troublesome situations involve a few drops of urine leaking out of your control, you have a good chance of preventing the condition from progressing by using non-invasive methods. Which ones? Essentially the same as those used for… facial rejuvenation. Treatments from the field of so-called aesthetic gynecology are helpful. They naturally regenerate tissues, restoring their youthful form and full functionality. This is sensible prevention that aligns with a healthy lifestyle and allows women to enjoy full activity for a long time.
What causes the problem?
It’s essentially female physiology. With age, from as early as 25, collagen production declines and its quality worsens. On the skin we see this as laxity and wrinkles. Internal organs are also made of the same building block—collagen. Muscles too, for example the vaginal walls, also lose their “firmness”.
In women, among other things, the angle between the urethra and the bladder is important. In addition, the urethra is very short and has no separate sphincter. It is surrounded by the pelvic floor muscles, which play a key role in controlling the outflow of urine. Pregnancy and childbirth, for example, greatly weaken them. This is the result of many months of mechanical stretching under the weight and pressure of the growing fetus. Childbirth itself, depending on how it proceeds, can exacerbate the problem or be a direct cause of urinary incontinence.
Time, along with the progressive decline in collagen quality, also causes relaxation and lowering of the pelvic floor muscles, which form a kind of hammock supporting the internal organs at the level of the perineum.
Not only do fibroblasts—the skin’s most important cells—produce less and less of it, but the fibers we already have stretch, become less and less elastic, and even crack. As a result, the tissues become increasingly less resilient. Deprived of solid “support,” the urethral opening shifts below the ring formed by the pelvic floor muscles. That’s where the problems come from. To get the situation under control, the muscles need to have their original tone and volume restored. Then they will once again “support” the urethra in the correct position.
With non-surgical methods (the surgical ones are the so-called meshes—tapes implanted to restore support under the bladder and the urethra), patients with mild to moderate symptoms—those who function without diapers—can be treated. Proper qualification is fundamental here. To stop, or even reverse, the process of urine leakage, one should regularly—basically for the rest of one’s life—perform so-called Kegel exercises.
Muscle training
The simplest of them is tensing the muscles by clenching the buttocks for 3 seconds, repeated in sets of 10, so that you complete 100 repetitions over the course of the day. The second exercise is deliberately stopping the urine stream while peeing. So-called geisha balls, considered an erotic gadget, can also be helpful in training the pelvic floor muscles. In this case, they are a training device. On the other hand, functioning with an overfilled bladder is very detrimental.
A very important element of therapy for stress urinary incontinence is eliminating lifting (picking up weights from the ground heavier than 5 kg). It is very common for women to lift children, whether they are one year old or 5 years old. In the first case, it is hard to avoid carrying the child, but in the second it is. The same goes for gym workouts. Very often women lift weights while training their glutes, or they raise heavy medicine balls during CrossFit exercises. Unfortunately, such behaviors worsen the condition of the pelvic floor muscles and the symptoms of urinary incontinence may intensify. I once described these rules as the “bridge theory,” where its base consists of two supports (a ban on lifting and exercises), and the span is continence. If even one of the supports is not stable, the whole bridge will collapse—that is, proper urine continence will not be achieved.
A new method of treating stress urinary incontinence through training the pelvic floor muscles is a procedure using an electromagnetic field. It stimulates the muscles to contract with an intensity unattainable during regular exercise. During a 28-minute session they contract more than 12,000 times. The therapy consists of a series of 4-6 sessions at intervals of a few days. It is completely noninvasive. It does not even require undressing. You simply spend just under half an hour sitting on a chair… The effects are astonishing—it is like bodybuilding workouts for the intimate areas. The muscles build up, like biceps, lift, and once again tightly close the urethral opening.
What procedures are performed to stop urine leakage?
First and foremost, intravaginal thermolifting procedures, identical to those used on the face. It is about the thermal effect—exposure to high temperature—which causes the mucosa and deeper structures, e.g., muscles, to contract. These include treatments with focused HIFU ultrasound, radiofrequency, and lasers. On the one hand, they provide an almost immediate improvement because protein fibers, including collagen, shorten. Over the course of a few months they are almost completely renewed, because fibroblasts stimulated to work produce new, healthy, youthful fibers. This is a completely natural self-repair of the body. Blood supply to the organs also improves. Most procedures do not even require convalescence. Immediately after the procedure, the patient returns to normal activity, including sexual activity. Intercourse is even recommended in this case; moreover, the woman immediately feels the positive effect of vaginal tightening. In the context of urinary incontinence, the therapeutic effect appears after about a month. As for laser treatments, which cause micro-injuries to tissues and sometimes slight bleeding, convalescence is recommended, but overall it does not exclude normal daily life. It involves limiting sexual activity and avoiding the use of a bathtub, pool, or sauna. The best results with these methods can be obtained in premenopausal patients; afterwards, the efficiency of fibroblasts, even after being stimulated to work, is decidedly lower.
Sealing by filling
Another method is to strengthen the muscles surrounding the urethra.
It is performed using the patient’s own tissue material, namely platelet-rich plasma, sometimes with the addition of hyaluronic acid. This preparation is injected into the structures that support the urethra. As a result of the procedure, the blood supply to this area improves, leading to muscle regeneration and improved tone. This is a minimally invasive and completely safe therapy, as it carries no risk of triggering an allergic reaction (the platelet-rich plasma is obtained from the patient’s own blood).
All of the above-described methods for treating stress urinary incontinence are safe, and their effectiveness as assessed by patients is very high. Of course, everything depends on the individual case and on the patient’s own engagement in the therapy.
