Each year in the United States, 1.3 million women enter menopause and begin a journey into a new stage of their reproductive health. For millions, this new stage isn’t all that welcome thanks to menopause side effects that range from hot flashes to urinary incontinence.
As experts in women’s health, the team at Women’s Clinic of the Rio Grande Valley, under the experienced guidance of Dr. Fernando Otero, provides excellent urinary incontinence care.
In the following, we review why more than half of postmenopausal women struggle with urinary incontinence and how we can help.
There are two primary ways in which the sudden drop in estrogen hormones that comes with menopause can lead to urinary incontinence:
Your estrogen hormones tasked themselves with keeping your pelvic muscles, including your pelvic floor, strong enough to handle the rigors of reproductive duties like pregnancy and childbirth.
Once you pass through menopause and your access to estrogen hormones is greatly reduced, these muscles can weaken. Because these muscles play a critical role in supporting your pelvic organs, including your bladder, this postmenopausal weakness can lead to pelvic prolapse (your bladder shifts downward) and stress incontinence.
Estrogen hormones are also involved in the healthy function of your urethra and bladder. And they keep everything running smoothly. So, absent these hormones, these organs may not function optimally, which can lead to incontinence.
So, between the compromised urinary function and weaker pelvic muscles, this explains why millions of women experience postmenopausal urinary incontinence.
If you’d like to regain control of your urinary function, there are several ways in which we can go about it, often in combination.
For starters, we always recommend that women keep up with pelvic floor strengthening exercises called Kegels, especially as they age. These daily exercises are one of the best ways to support your bladder and retain control over your urinary tract. (For a quick primer on Kegels, click here.)
Another great approach is hormone therapy — we rebalance your reproductive hormone levels after menopause to help maintain urinary function. Hormone therapies can either be local, such as a topical cream, or systemic, and we’re happy to discuss which might be best for you.
There are other incontinence treatments, such as medications, Botox® injections, and bladder training, that target specific kinds of incontinence. For example, Botox can work well for an overactive bladder, and bladder training works well for urge incontinence.
The bottom line is that there are solutions, and you don’t have to live with postmenopausal incontinence. To get on the road to better control over your urinary function, please contact one of our offices in McAllen or Edinburg, Texas, today to schedule an appointment.
