While leaking when you cough or sneeze is common, it’s not normal. This video explains more about stress incontinence and what you can do to avoid it.
I leak when I cough or sneeze, is that normal? Coughing and sneezing puts pressure on your pelvic floor. Intra abdominal pressure pulling together at the top and pushing down on ‘the girls’, on your pelvic floor. This is called stress incontinence. While this is common, it is not normal at all. And it is not something you should be living with.
Other things can cause stress incontinence, like high intensity exercise, jumping, skipping, burpees, laughing and yelling suddenly. Anything that causes you to leak, and causes this downward pressure on your pelvic floor – if at all possible, you should stop for now. Try to eliminate all things you do have control of that cause leaking.
If you leak when you cough or sneeze, what you want to try to do before it’s coming, if you’ve got warning, is to quickly lift your pelvic floor. So, do it with me while I explain. You’re gonna lift the girls up. A really quick lift, not a glute clench, so not squeezing your booty. It’s an internal deep lift. Because what we want to train our pelvic floor to do, without consciously needing to think about it, is it will naturally lift up before you sneeze or cough.
So spring is here – hay fever season. If you’re a cougher or sneezer, try to exhale squeeze and left and exhale and relax. If you have a sneezing fit, or coughing fit and your pelvic floor are good for a bit and then they just get wasted and they start leaking. Try to not be discouraged, they’re just really tired. Lay down on your back and put your feet up by your bottom, below your knees and just do some nice deep breaths to relax your pelvic floor and allow them to recover quicker.
While it’s common, it is not normal to leak when you cough and sneeze and I’ve got really detailed help and a Free Pelvic Floor Cheat Sheet download that will help you.
Click on the link.
There’s a video teaching you how to do your pelvic floor exercises and a printable two page PDF you can take around with you to help remind you and show you how to do it so that you can have ‘sneezes without wees’, ‘leak free laughter’ and get through spring and hay fever season dry.
Good luck.
Kirstyn xx
I never took into account the fact that it is already incontinence when you begin to experience leaks for any activity that you have been doing normally before. My sister mentioned experiencing that when we were running early in the morning today. She should get an NDIS continence assessment for her own peace of mind, since it might still probably be treated with the help of medical professionals if she seeks their advice.