Bladder Control With Multiple Sclerosis

About 80% of individuals with multiple sclerosis will suffer from bladder incontinence sometime during their lifetime. Typically after you start to experience new symptoms with MS, especially those pertaining to muscle spasms and muscle control, you can start dealing with incontinence. Having bladder control problems can be highly embarrassing as you may not know when you are going to have an episode. Many times people with incontinence will end up avoiding social situations and it can lead to depression and many other concerns. It is important that you focus on using the right incontinence supplies so you do not suffer from depression as you try to avoid letting other people notice that you are suffering from incontinence. There are a number of great incontinent supplies on the market like washable adult diapers to disposable diapers and bed pads that you will be able to find products which can easily make managing your condition easier and less embarrassing.

Having bladder control problems when you are also suffering from MS is a major blow as you may feel as though you just got control over some of the other struggles you have been having. Now to have more placed on top of you can be a burden. Schedule a visit with your doctor right away to talk about incontinence and to see if there are other symptoms of MS that are happening as well.

Bladder control with incontinence often deals with the following types of incontinence:

• Urinary Incontinence. This is one of the most common types of incontinence with MS. This occurs when you have involuntarily urine loss. You may feel that you need to urinate all the time or it could just happen once and awhile. When you sleep, you may wake up several times to use the bathroom or you could just wet the bed. If you do have nighttime issues you should use some incontinence bed pads to protect your bedding. Overnight adult diapers can also help in capturing the urine and to keep it in the diaper.

• Mixed Incontinence. You may have several types of incontinence like urge mixed with stress incontinence. This is common for individuals with MS because you usually have nerve damage or the brain has a hard time sending the messages to the nervous system to communicate when you need to use the restroom.

Speak to your doctor so they can help you to understand which type of incontinence you are dealing with and so they can help you in managing it.

Properly management of incontinence is vital as you could end up with very serious and painful skin rashes. It is a smart idea to invest in quality incontinence supplies that will help in pulling the urine away from the skin and helping to keep you dry so you do not get skin rashes. Change your incontinence diapers when they are wet so that the bacteria cannot get back into the urethra and lead to a painful bladder infection. Without correct management of MS and incontinence you may have more than an bladder infection as it is likely you could develop sometime a little more serious like a kidney infection.

In addition to medications and quality incontinence supplies your doctor may also recommend that you use bladder training to help manage incontinence. Bladder training will be used with muscle problems as your goal is to help regain motor control. With bladder training you will focus on increasing the time intervals between urination and to gain control over bladder contractions again. Strengthening the muscles surrounding the bladder can aid in controlling urine loss. Kegel exercises are commonly used to help you regain control over your muscles when dealing with MS.