What can I do if I lose control of my bladder when I lift weights?

What can I do if I lose control of my bladder when I lift weights?

Jennifer Anger, M.D, M.P.H. (Assistant Professor) gives expert video advice on: What can I do if I can't make it to the bathroom in time to urinate?; What can I do if I lose control of my bladder when I sneeze, cough or laugh?; What can I do if I lose control of my bladder when I lift weights? and more...

For patients who leak urine with weight lifting, that tends to be what we call mild stress incontinence. Often people may not necessarily leak all the time with cough, laugh, sneeze but they'll leak with jumping. The classic is jumping on a trampoline and I often say, you know, if you leak jumping on a trampoline but no other time, that's not that bad. That's what we would say is mild stress incontinence. So it is a type of stress incontinence and it can be treated just the same way that we would treat someone for leakage with cough, laugh and sneeze. Two main types of incontinence are stress incontinence and urge incontinence. Urge incontinence occurs when someone gets an urge and leaks on the way to the toilet.It's part of a spectrum of what we call overactive bladder. It includes urinary frequency, meaning I have to go all the time; urgency, which is I've got to go now; and leakage on the way to the bathroom, if a patient or a person doesn't make it to the toilet they leak with an urge and that's called urge incontinence. Forty percent of patients, of people, with incontinence have mixed incontinence, meaning they have both stress and urge incontinence.