Causes and Symptoms

Stress incontinence is a result of internal and external factors affecting the functioning of bladder, specifically the urethra tube. These factors can stimulate the urethra to open and allow urine leakage. It can happen with weak pelvic floor muscles or a damaged urethral sphincter (which is a round muscle that forces the urethra to remain closed).

women are twice as likely as men to suffer from involuntary leakage. The most common causes of stress incontinence among women are pregnancy and childbirth. During pregnancy and childbirth, the sphincter and pelvic muscles stretch out and are weakened (in case of malnutrition).

Older age and conditions that cause a chronic cough can also cause stress incontinence. This condition can also be a side effect of pelvic surgery.

Some women only suffer from stress incontinence during the week before they get their period. Sometimes that estrogen drops during the phase of menstrual cycle, which can weaken the urethra. This is not common though.

Among men, prostate surgery is a common cause of stress incontinence. The prostate gland surrounds the male urethra, and its removal (even partially) can result in the loss of support of the urethra.

Other risk factors for stress incontinence include:

• smoking due to chronic cough
• any other condition associated with chronic cough
• excessive caffeine and alcohol use
• obesity
• constipation
• long-term participation in high-impact activities
• hormonal deficiencies

Some of the issues leading to stress incontinence may include:

• Bladder damage from a hysterectomy or prostate surgery
• Excessive abdominal pressure from obesity or pregnancy
• Nerve and tissue damage as a result of childbirth
• Brain and spinal cord functioning issues, such as Parkinson’s disease
• Connective tissue disorders
• Medication side effects
• Coughing and sneezing due to smoking
• Years of high impact physical activities

Stress vs. Urge Incontinence

Having urinary incontinence is a harsh reality for many people. This condition has different categories, with the most common ones being stress incontinence and urge incontinence.

1. Stress Incontinence

This condition happens when a force of pressure causes the bladder muscles to contract, resulting in a sudden urine leakage. This type of incontinence is stimulated by certain physical activities like laughing, sneezing, coughing, lifting, or exercise.

Bladder control problems tend to affect young to middle-aged females in response to their body’s unique issues. Young women often experience it after childbirth or from having weak pelvic floor muscles, mostly as a result of heredity. For those women in their 40s and 50s, stress incontinence may be present with the onset of menopause.

2. Urge Incontinence

This form of urinary incontinence occurs with an incapability to avoid urinating when the urge arises, and it is also known as overactive bladder condition. It may be the result of damage to the nerves and muscles in the bladder, trauma to connecting parts of the nervous system, infections, or medications.

Being unable to hold it long enough to reach a washroom/toilet is often a result of various health conditions. These may include diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or a stroke. Urge incontinence can also indicate bladder cancer.

Stress Incontinence Risk Factors and Complications

The factors causing stress incontinence have a direct and indirect link to the risk factors of the condition.

1. Age

The aging process itself is not considered a direct cause, but as our body changes over time, the results play a part in whether we experience stress incontinence. It can also include weakening of the bladder muscles.

2. Childbirth

During a childbirth, delivery may cause trauma or damage that leads to stress incontinence.

3. Body Weight

Since physical pressure causes stress incontinence, those with extra pounds are at a higher risk for this condition.

4. Surgery

Prostate surgery or a hysterectomy increases the risk for stress incontinence. These procedures can change the functioning of the bladder. The complications of stress incontinence can be the result of physical and emotional consequences.

5. Urinary Incontinence

By experiencing stress incontinence, it can also lead to another form of urinary incontinence known as urge incontinence. While these conditions differ, one can lead to the other.

6. Psychological Distress

Having stress incontinence can cause emotional stress as you are conscious about avoiding behavior that stimulates the urine leakage such as laughing or coughing. A person may withdraw from family, friends, and relationships.

7. Skin Irritation

The regions of the skin that come in contact with any urine can become raw and infected by skin rashes.

Stress Incontinence Exercises

If you have stress incontinence, you can strengthen weak pelvic floor muscles with targeted exercises known as Kegel exercises. These exercises are to tone and tighten these muscles without any surgical or chemical rehabilitation. The goal is to prevent urine leakage by improving the capability of the sphincter muscle.

Allopathic drugs there is no any treatment for stress incontinence.

Here are some Homeopathic medicines for the treatment of the stress incontinence:

Baryta Carbonica

The prime medicines for urine incontinence due to prostate complaints are Baryta Carbonicum; Frequent inclination to urinate, with abundant emission. Urgent inclination/Urging to urinate; urine can hardly be retained, during urination, burning in urethra, Diminution of sexual desire in women.

Iodum

Iodum is rated as one of the best medicines for urine incontinence, Hardness of the prostate gland..

Prunus Spinosa

Prunus Spinosa is a very effective option in urine incontinences where the urine seems to pass as far as glans and then returns, causing pain in the urethra, hurriedly impelled to urinate; the urine seems to pass as far as glans, and then returns and causes pain in urethra.

Lilium Tigrinum

Urine incontinence due to uterus problems, Lilium Tigrinum is a good option. Frequent urination during day, with smarting in urethra. Continuous pressure in bladder. Constant desire to urinate, with scanty discharge; burning (tenesmus) and smarting in urethra after. Bearing down sensation of heavy weight and pressure in uterine region, as if whole contents would press out through vagina.

Guaiacum

Guaiacum is very effective for urine incontinence in women who complain of a sharp, stitching pain after urinating, Urging to urinate, even after micturition. The urine is profuse, and fetid. Cutting in urethra while urine flows. Stitching in neck of bladder after ineffectual urging to urinate. Emissions without dreams. Discharge from urethra.

Senecio Aureus

Senecio Aureus works very well in women who feel a constant urge to urinate, together with great heat, making it stand out among the best medicines for urine incontinence of this type. Men with involuntary emissions, Prostate enlarged, Tenesmus of bladder; smarting in urethra, dropsy. Hematuria; renal pain with nausea. Tenesmus of bladder, with heat and urging. Irritation of bladder in children, preceded by heat and headache. Renal colic with or without nausea. Chronic inflammation of neck of bladder with bloody urine and tenesmus of bladder. Chronic inflammation of kidneys, Prostate gland enlarged, feels hard and swollen to touch.

Dysuria: of women and children, evidently of catarrhal origin; mucous sediment in urine; with uterine displacement. Smarting in fossa naviculars before urination.

Causticum

Causticum is one of the most effective medicines for urine incontinence with involuntary when coughing, sneezing. Expelled very slowly, and sometimes retained. Involuntary during first sleep at night; also from slightest excitement. Retention after surgical operations. Loss of sensibility on passing urine. Uterine inertia during labor

Natrum Mur

Pain just after urinating. Increased, involuntary when walking, coughing, etc. Has to wait a long time for it to pass if others are present.

Sarsaparilla

Urine dribbles while sitting. Bladder distended and tender. Child screams before and while passing urine. Tenesmus of bladder; urine passes in thin, feeble stream. Pain at meatus.

Hepar Sulph

Voided slowly, without force-drops vertically, bladder weak. Seems as if some always remained. Greasy pellicle on urine. Bladder difficulties of old men.

Copaiva

Burning pressure; painful micturition by drops. Retention, with pain in bladder, anus, and rectum. Catarrh of bladder; dysuria. Swelling of orifice. Constant desire to urinate.

Pulsatilla Protensis

Increased desire; worse when lying down. Burning in orifice of urethra during and after micturition. Involuntary micturition at night, while coughing or passing flatus. After urinating, spasmodic pain in bladder.

Orchitis; pain from abdomen to testicles. Thick, yellow discharge from urethra, Acute prostatitis. Pain and tenesmus in urinating, worse lying on back.

Cantharis

Cantharis is one of the most reliable medicines for urine incontinence where there is a constant desire to urinate. In cases where the urge to urinate is very strong but the person can emit urine only when he goes down on his knees and strains really hard, Involuntary when coughing, sneezing (Puls). Expelled very slowly, and sometimes retained. Involuntary during first sleep at night; also from slightest excitement. Retention after surgical operations. Loss of sensibility on passing urine. Uterine inertia during labor.

This weakness progresses until we have gradually appearing paralysis. Local paralysis, vocal cords, muscles of deglutition, of tongue, eyelids, face, bladder and extremities.

Pareira Brava

Pareira Brava is one of the most reliable prescriptions, Constant urging; great straining. For ineffectual urge to urinate in newly married women.

Prostatic affections, and catarrh of bladder. Sensation as if bladder were distended, with pain. Pain going down thigh. Feeling of the bladder being distended and neuralgic pain in the anterior rural region. (Staph.) Dribbling after micturition. (Selen.) Violent pain in glans penis. Itching along urethra; urethritis, with prostatic trouble. Inflammation of urethra; becomes almost cartilaginous.

Staphysagria

Staphysagria is the best for nervous affections with marked irritability, diseases of the Genito-urinary tract. Ineffectual urging to urinate in newly married women. Pressure upon bladder; feels as if it did not empty. Sensation as if a drop of urine were rolling continuously along the channel. Burning in urethra during micturition. Prostatic troubles; frequent urination, burning in urethra when not urinating

Sulphur

Sulphur is very effective in cases with pain in the bladder if the urge to urinate is not attended,  Frequent micturition, especially at night. Enuresis, especially in scrofulous, untidy children. Burning in urethra during micturition, lasts long after. Mucus and pus in urine; parts sore over which it passes. Must hurry, sudden call to urinate. Great quantities of colorless urine. Pudenda itches. Vagina burns. Much offensive perspiration.

Stitches in penis. Involuntary emissions. Itching of genitals when going to bed

Clematis

Clematis patient need to strain hard to pass even a few drops of urine. Urine that suddenly stops and starts is also treated well with medicine Clematis, Tingling in urethra lasting some time after urinating. Frequent, scanty urination; burning at orifice. Interrupted flow. Urethra feels constricted. Urine emitted drop by drop. Inability to pass all the urine; dribbling after urinating. Pain worse at night, pain along the spermatic cord. Commencing stricture.

Zingiber

One of the top-rated medicines for urine incontinence in cases where the urine continues to ooze in drops even after urinating is.

Frequent desire to urinate. Stinging, burning in orifice. Yellow discharge from urethra. Urine thick, turbid, of strong odor, suppressed. Complete suppression after typhoid. After urinating, continues to ooze in drops.

Equisetum Hymenale

Equisetum Hymenale, Principal action on the bladder. A remedy for enuresis and dysuria. Severe, dull pain and feeling of fullness in bladder, not relieved by urinating. Frequent urging with severe pain at the close of urination. Urine flows only drop by drop. Sharp, burning, cutting pain in urethra while urinating.

Incontinence in children, with dreams or night-mares when passing urine. Incontinence in old women, also with involuntary stools. Retention and dysuria during pregnancy and after delivery. Much mucus in urine. Albuminuria. Involuntary urination.

Caina Maritima

Caina, This is a children’s remedy; big, fat, rosy, scrofulous, corresponding to many conditions that may be referred to intestinal irritation, such as worms and accompanying complaints. An irritability of temper, variable appetite, grinding of teeth, and even convulsions, with screams and violent jerking of the hands and feet, child is very irritable and nervous. Kreosotum has proved itself as one of the most useful medicines for bedwetting in children, especially when it is very difficult to wake the child even as he wets the bed.

The three prominent medicines for urine incontinence in the elderly include Alumina, Alfa Alfa and Secale Cornutum. Alumina, one of the top grade Homeopathic medicines for urine incontinence, treat the condition most effectively in the elderly. Alfa Alfa is prescribed where the elderly feel a frequent urge to urinate as the kidneys are inactive. Secale Cornutum is rated among the best medicines for urine incontinence involving involuntarily urination in elderly who have suffered a paralysis of the bladder.