Urinary incontinence is the involuntary leakage of urine from the bladder. It affects 10% of the population. Women are more commonly affected.
The most common types of leaking urine are stress incontinence
and urge incontinence. Stress incontinence is when urine leaks out at times
when the bladder is under pressure, such as coughing, sneezing, heavy lifting
exercising and laughing. Stress incontinence is usually the result of the weakening
of or damage to the muscles used to prevent urination, such as the
pelvic floor muscles and the urethral sphincter.
Urge incontinence is when urine leaks as a sudden, intense
urge to pass urine is needed. Urge incontinence is usually the result of
overactivity of the muscles, which control the bladder. It is also known as
overactive bladder. Pelvic floor muscle training is one of the treatments used
to treat this condition.
Overflow incontinence. This is caused by the bladder not
being emptied completely.
Functional incontinence. A physical or mental
impairment keeps you from making it to the toilet in time.
Mixed incontinence. Combination of any types above.
There are many causes for urinary incontinence: Some food
and drinks such as alcohol caffeine, chilli peppers and food containing high in
spice, sugar, or acid. It can be caused by some medical conditions such as
urinary tract infection, constipation enlarged prostate in men, pregnancy and
childbirth in women etc.
Risk factors for urinary incontinence include gender, women
are more likely to have leaking urine, age, older people turn to get more.
Overweight, smoking, having diabetes, and neurological conditions.
Acupuncture is effective to treat urinary incontinence. This
is proved by research papers. For example, recently Xu et al investigated the
effectiveness of acupuncture on stress urinary incontinence. Before treatment a
72-hour bladder diary recorded by participants at baseline (week 0) and then
acupuncture treatment was applied and the bladder diary was recorded during the
treatment period (weeks 2, 4 and 6) and follow-up period (weeks 15–18 and weeks
27–30). In the bladder diary, the participants recorded in detail the time and
frequency of UI, activity that occurred at the time of leak, and the type and
volume of liquid intake. 80 women participated the study and they reported
significant improvement after 6, 18, and 30 weeks acupuncture treatments.
Another new research paper investigated the effect of
acupuncture on stress urinary incontinence. The result has shown that after
6 weeks of treatment, the mean 72-h urinary incontinence episode
frequency, proportion of participants with at least a 50% decrease in mean
72-h incontinence episode frequency, participant-reported SUI
severity, International Consultation on Incontinence Questionnaire-Short
Form scores, and participants' self-evaluation of therapeutic effects all
improved.
A review has reported that acupuncture can reduce the amount
of urine leakage, improve incontinence.
References
Xu et al PloS One ( 2016) 11(3):e0150821.
Wang W et al World J Urol 2018 Oct 13. doi:
10.1007/s00345-018-2521-2. [Epub ahead of print]
Zilin Long et al Front Public Health. 2022; 10: 827853.
