Author| Dr. Maureen O’Keefe, DPT pelvic health physical therapist specializing in treating adults with urinary incontinence.

What can I do at home to improve urinary incontinence? Some tips for you to help fix your incontinence naturally.

Our physical therapists provide every patient extensive education and self care training to help their urinary incontinence. Here we detail some general tips that are recommended in some guidelines and through our clinical practice with treating urinary incontinence. We recommend you work with your PT to figure out what is best for you. Because you are not our patient, these tips to fix incontinence naturally are for educational purposes only and serve as a talking point with your provider. If you are interested in working with one of our licensed physical therapists, call us at (616) 516-4334 to speak with one of our knowledgeable staff members or submit your questions here.

1. Monitor your bladder symptoms: Pay attention to what is going on. Notice your urinary frequency, flow of urine, how often you wake at night to urinate and any changes in your status. See your provider when things change or if you have any concerning symptoms (pain, burning, difficulty emptying, blood, etc.)
2. Drink enough water to keep yourself hydrated. With urinary incontinence, it is helpful to stay properly hydrated. Some people avoid drinking water or other beverages due to fear of leaking, but this concentrates your urine and denies your bladder the chance to fill up, which is helpful for bladder function.
3. Try drinking your water all at once, instead of sipping all day long. Sometimes sipping water all day long, can exacerbate urinary incontinence. Instead, for some people, it is helpful to drink a large glass of water all at once. This also helps your bladder to learn how to fill up and hold urine.
4. Avoid fluids that irritate your bladder or worsen urinary incontinence. Each person is different, but common culprits include alcohol, carbonated beverages and caffeine.
5. Don’t push your pee out. Urinating in a relax manner, either standing or sitting, optimizes your bladder function and avoids straining the pelvic floor muscles. Rushing or pushing out your urine can worsen pelvic floor muscle function and exacerbate urinary incontinence.
6. Be certain to fully empty your bladder. Take all the time you need to empty. Some men benefit from gently milking the urethra to get all of the urine out of the urethra. For some men, this helps reduce post-void dribbling.
7. If you experience urinary frequency and urgency, use techniques to calm these bladder spasms. Things like diaphragmatic breathing, gentle pelvic floor muscle contractions followed by relaxing them, distraction techniques and mental tasks to take you mind off of your bladder can help some men calm bladder spasms.
8. Urinating every 2 to 4 hours apart is optimal. We prefer that you try to retrain bladder control to hit these benchmarks. Some men cannot hold their urine for 2 hours without experiencing severe bladder spasms; you need pelvic PT to calm this problem. Other men wait too long to urinate and simply overtax the bladder control system because they don’t urinate often enough.
9. Use the toilet when you feel the urge to defecate. Constipation and holding in stool can worsen bladder control. This is one of our best tips to fix incontinence naturally. Truly, if you have bladder control problems, you need to be certain your bowels are regular. Our pelvic PTs specialize in treating constipation, bladder, bowel and pain related issues. If you are interested in working with us, call 616-516-4334 or submit your questions here.
10. Eat a healthy diet with enough fiber, fruit and vegetables to keep your bowel movements regular. Fiber doesn’t help everyone, but in America we are generally not eating enough of it. If you have urinary incontinence, you must improve your bowel regularity to help your bladder control.
11. Talk to your physician about all the medications you are taking, because some of them contribute to bladder control problems.
12. Remain physically active. We know that more sedentary people have worse control of their urine. The pelvic floor muscles need to be worked throughout the day and being active and moving around helps these muscles. For example, in one study men who were physically active one or more times/week had a 51% lower risk of urinary incontinence. Walking for exercise is one tip we offer to naturally help incontinence. Your pelvic floor and bladder control muscles can benefit from walking. If exercise causes your incontinence, our physical therapy specializes in resolving leakage that is caused by movement, jumping, running or other exercise.
13. Maintain healthy body weight. Belly fat puts more pressure on the bladder control system, for both men and women. If you have excess weight, working on optimizing your weight can improve your bladder control. One study found that men who were obese had a 220% increased odds of urinary incontinence compared to men who were normal weight.
14. Stop smoking or vaping. In a large study of over 600 women smoking was found to substantially increase the risk of stress incontinence (involuntary loss of urine).
15. When lifting, exhale and use good body mechanics If you hold your breath when lifting things, you are applying extra force through your bladder and pelvic floor, making it easier to strain and lose urine.
16. Improve your posture The optimal alignment of your head, ribcage, low back and pelvis sets you up for better bladder control. If you know that your posture is not good, you may be orienting your bladder, urethra and pelvic floor in a position where it is easier to lose urine. Our physical therapy program addresses postural correction as part of our urinary incontinence recovery physical therapy.
17. Strengthen your core, hips and whole body If your core, glutes or thighs are not at optimal strength and functioning, then your pelvic floor may go into over-drive to compensate; this is pelvic floor dysfunction and makes it possible to experience urinary incontinence.
18. Optimize your blood sugar. There is a connection between diabetes and incontinence.
19. Don’t assume Kegels will help you If you have pelvic floor dysfunction (and you do, if you are having urinary incontinence), sometimes the muscles and bladder control gets worse if you do Kegels. This is why our licensed physical therapists work closely with you to assess and treat your incontinence. Every patient receives a customized and whole-body treatment program and is closely supervised by their physical therapist.
20. Work to improve your balance. The pelvic floor muscles should be responding when you lose your balance and as you walk and move. We use balance based exercises routinely as part of our pelvic floor rehabilitation programs to comprehensively improve urinary incontinence. If you are interested in working with one of our licensed physical therapists, call us at (616) 516-4334 to speak with one of our knowledgeable staff members or submit your questions here.
21. Address any pain you experience. Pain can upregulate your system and contribute to pelvic floor dysfunction. Our PTs specialize in treating chronic pelvic pain, endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, TM joint pain, neck and back pain. If you would like to work with our PTs or have questions about our treatment, call us at 616-516-4334 or contact us here.
22. Women going through perimenopause or who are menopausal, consider estrogen. As estrogen declines, urinary incontinence occurs more readily. If you are menopausal, talk to your provider about topical estrogen, if you are a candidate for it.
23. Work with a pelvic physical therapist at Purple Mountain Physical Therapy. Our PTs provide whole body treatments that truly work to resolve urinary incontinence. If it were easy to solve incontinence, then you would have already figured it out on your own. We find that our patients struggle for a long time with incontinence and when they come to us, they are finally happy to have someone identify what is going on with their body to help this. Instead of just reading these tips to fix incontinence naturally, we believe you would benefit from the support and guidance of our pelvic physical therapists. Our one-on-one physical therapy appointments offer whole-body treatment and solutions for incontinence and go well beyond basic Kegels exercises. In fact, many of our patients do not complete Kegels at all.

If these tips to fix incontinence naturally overwhelm you, take the guesswork out of your problem and work with one of our PTs. Call 616-516-4334 to get your questions answered.

We know that urinary incontinence can be stubborn and difficult to resolve. We provide you a clear treatment program and framework to resolve your incontinence. What’s holding you back from getting started? We’ve been doing this work for years and are here to help! If you are interested in working with one of our licensed physical therapists to receive a solution to your urinary incontinence, call us at (616) 516-4334 to speak with one of our knowledgeable staff members or submit your questions here.

Working with a provider who specializes in this treatment offers you a higher level of customized care and opportunity to solve your incontinence problem. Our PTs offer in-person treatment in Grand Rapids or telehealth visits, for those who qualify. If you have questions about our treatment, cost or availability, call us at 616-516-4334 or contact us here.

We hope these tips to fix your incontinence naturally give you a starting point, but working with a pelvic PT truly gives you solutions.

Our pelvic and bladder physical therapy gives you natural, exercise-based and manual therapy treatment methods to resolve urinary incontinence. At Purple Mountain PT, our licensed physical therapists specialize in treating men, women and kids who have bladder, bowel or pain issues. We love to work with you and provide you insights into what is causing your problem and designing a treatment program for incontinence that is natural, without side effects. If you are interested in working with one of our licensed physical therapists to receive a solution to your urinary incontinence, call us at (616) 516-4334 to speak with one of our knowledgeable staff members or submit your questions here.

We offer in-person and telehealth visits, for those who qualify. This work is an honor for us and we are devoted to helping you overcome urinary incontinence. Don’t hesitate to reach out to learn more. 616-516-4334

Peace,

Dr. Maureen O’Keefe, DPT founder of Purple Mountain Physical Therapy and specialist in pelvic health, neck, back and TM joint physical therapy.

All information is for educational purposes and is not meant to treat you or substitute for working with your own physical therapist or physician.

Since you are looking for tips and natural treatments for urinary incontinence, you may be interested in these other articles we’ve written:

Physical Therapy for Male Incontinence in Grand Rapids

Is There A Connection Between Diabetes and Incontinence?

Endometriosis Physical Therapy Treatment in Grand Rapids

What Can Pelvic Floor Physical Therapy Help With?

Does Pelvic Floor Therapy Work for Prolapse?

What is High Tone Pelvic Floor Dysfunction?

How Much Bedwetting is Normal?

 

References for tips to fix incontinence naturally:

Brown, Heidi W., Candace Parker-Autry, and Angela L. Sergeant. “Bladder and Bowel Continence in Older Women.” Challenges in Older Women’s Health. Springer, Cham, 2021. 163-183.

Bump RC, McClish DK. Cigarette smoking and urinary incontinence in women. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 1992;167:1213–1218.

Engstrom G, Walker-Engstrom ML, Loof L, Leppert J. Prevalence of three lower urinary tract symptoms in men-a population-based study. Fam Pract. 2003;20:7–10

Masterson, Thomas A., et al. “Comprehensive pelvic floor physical therapy program for men with idiopathic chronic pelvic pain syndrome: a prospective study.” Translational andrology and urology 6.5 (2017): 910.

Mobley D, Baum N. Smoking: Its Impact on Urologic Health. Rev Urol. 2015;17(4):220-5. PMID: 26839519; PMCID: PMC4735668.

Nelson RL, Furner SE. Risk factors for the development of fecal and urinary incontinence in Wisconsin nursing home residents. Maturitas. 2005;52:26–31.

Schmidbauer J, Temml C, Schatzl G, et al. Risk factors for urinary incontinence in both sexes. Analysis of a health screening project. Eur Urol. 2001;39:565–570.

Shamliyan TA, Wyman JF, Ping R, Wilt TJ, Kane RL. Male urinary incontinence: prevalence, risk factors, and preventive interventions. Rev Urol. 2009 Summer;11(3):145-65. PMID: 19918340; PMCID: PMC2777062.

Teunissen TA, van den Bosch WJ, van den Hoogen HJ, Lagro-Janssen AL. Prevalence of urinary, fecal and double incontinence in the elderly living at home. Int Urogynecol J Pelvic Floor Dysfunct. 2004;15:10–13. discussion 13.

Van Oyen H, Van Oyen P. Urinary incontinence in Belgium; prevalence, correlates and psychosocial consequences. Acta Clin Belg. 2002;57:207–218

Zhang AY, Strauss GJ, Siminoff LA. Effects of combined pelvic floor muscle exercise and a support group on urinary incontinence and quality of life of postprostatectomy patients. Oncol Nurs Forum. 2007;34:47–53.