Information About Your Bladder Control Problems

Bladder control issues can encompass many symptoms, like urinary leakage (incontinence), inability to empty your bladder entirely (retention), or just the bothersome urgency and frequency to use the restroom.  If you have incontinence or any of these other aggravating symptoms, you're not alone. Urinary control problems affect countless Americans, which makes it as common as many different prominent diseases including asthma, diabetes, and osteoporosis. It isn't strictly a female issue, nor is it a normal part of the aging process.

Urinary control issues can be disastrous or at the very least lessen one’s quality of life in Creve Coeur, Kirkwood, Florissant, or Washington, Missouri. You may leak large or small volumes of urine, use the washroom quite often, or be unable to completely empty your bladder. These conditions might affect your life daily and can make straight forward day to day activities harder.  You may feel confined by a fear of leaking accidents, the need to be near the bathroom at all times, and a general preoccupation with your bladder.  These types of symptoms might affect one’s social life -- you might need to scale back on your hobbies, stop working, bypass going to the movies, eating out, or meeting with family and friends.

How Come I Have Urinary Control Issues?

Nerves carry info back-and-forth from the brain. Certain nerves manage the bladder and muscle tissues that relate to urination. When the communication system between these nerves and your brain isn't functioning properly, an individual might have bladder problems like urinary retention and over active bladder symptoms, such as urgency, frequency, nocturia (getting out of bed at night) with or without urinary incontinence.

Different Kinds Of Urinary Control Difficulties

With urge urinary incontinence, you may:

• Lose urine the instant you feel a powerful need to go to the washroom
• Leak urine when you cannot go to the restroom quickly enough
• Leak urine whenever you consume even a tiny amount of liquid, or when you hear or touch running liquid

With urgency-frequency, you may:

• Have frequent, aggravating, uncontrollable urges to urinate
• Visit the restroom more often than normal (over seven times a day)
• Often feel your bladder is not totally empty even after using the bathroom

With urgency-retention, you may:

• Spend a long time at the toilet but produce only a weak, dribbling stream of urine
• Leak urine (also called overflow incontinence)
• Not have a sensation whenever your bladder is full
• Have to use a catheter to empty your bladder

If you or someone you know is suffering from any of these annoying urinary symptoms, call Metropolitan Urological Specialists in St. Louis, Missouri and make an appointment with one of their physicians to start taking control of your life again.