With urinary incontinence, you experience an involuntary leakage of urine due to loss of bladder control. People often avoid seeking help since they find it embarrassing — which means the condition is sometimes left untreated. This is very unfortunate since the underlying cause is often treatable, and treatment can improve quality of life dramatically. The symptoms and severity of urinary incontinence range from occasionally leaking urine when you cough or sneeze to having an urge to urinate that’s so sudden and strong that you don’t get to the toilet in time. There are different types of incontinence. Most common are stress, urge and overflow incontinence.
If you frequently or constantly dribble urine, you may have overflow incontinence, which is an inability to empty your bladder. Sometimes you may feel as if you never completely empty your bladder. When you try to urinate, you may produce only a weak stream of urine. This type of incontinence may occur in people with a damaged bladder, blocked urethra or nerve damage from diabetes and in men with prostate gland problems. Treatment depends on the severity of your symptoms and ranges from catheterisation, behaviour advice and physical therapy to pharmaceuticals and surgery, often a combination of treatment is mostly effective.