Dr. Mary Claire Haver

There's a sling there that when we cough and laugh and sneeze and jump, the sling holds that urethra in place.

But after we have babies and we have obstetric injury and we get older, if you cough a lot, if you have poor collagen, if you're malnourished, if you're obese, that sling goes out.

Okay, you start losing that sling.

And then you start your ability to hold onto urine when you're stressed, when you physically go through a stress in the pelvic floor, like jumping, laughing, coughing, sneezing, that sling fails and you leak.

That is called stress incontinence.

Now, we have something called urge incontinence.

It's very different with the same outcome.

You leak.

So it is an involuntary spasm of the bladder.

Meaning the bladder wall is full of muscle and it just starts spasming.

Why does that happen?

It can be because of inflammation.

It could be because of aging.

It could be because of signaling, bad signaling coming, you know, to the bladder itself from our nervous system.

So urge incontinence, sometimes there's a trigger and you can like put a key in the lock and it triggers your bladder to spasm.

You...

all of a sudden feel like you have to go and you start running to the bathroom and you leak usually on the way or you just can't make it.

Now, everybody does that from time to time, unfortunately, but for others, it's just a pattern.

And so fortunately, this is treated, this urge incontinence is treated with medication.

It's a parasympathetic action and it calms the bladder wall.