Bladder retraining is a physical therapy technique that helps to relieve urinary incontinence, especially urge incontinence in people who experience a range of incontinence-related symptoms.
If you’re experiencing these problems, you’re not alone: more than 13 million American adults suffer from urinary incontinence, that’s nearly 1 in 20, or roughly 80,000 adults in the greater Chicago area alone.
What is Bladder Retraining?
Bladder retraining is a behavior therapy. You and your physical therapist will use a range of muscle exercises but also behavioral training to gradually improve the capacity of your bladder and the time it takes between the need to urinate.
Here’s how bladder training works:
- Create a bladder diary: Record what times and when you feel the urge to urinate and when you do so. This will give your therapist a baseline to understand how bladder retraining can help, and inform the right approach.
- Set a void schedule: You, and your therapist, will design a voiding schedule. It will begin with a bladder voiding as soon as you wake up each morning. From there, you’ll set times at which to urinate. It’s important not to use the restroom outside of these times, and it’s important to void your bladder at your scheduled time even if you don’t feel a need to urinate.
- Gradually increase the intervals in your void schedule: Over time, you’ll try to increase the interval between bladder movements in 15-minute intervals.
At the same time as following this schedule and working with your therapist, you’ll also perform exercises to strengthen and train your pelvic floor muscles. These may or may not include Kegel exercises.
Who Can Benefit from Bladder Retraining?
Bladder retraining can be beneficial to anyone who suffers from incontinence, but it is particularly useful for patients with urge incontinence, or high urinary frequency.
Urge Incontinence
This condition is a feeling of intense need to urinate that may cause your pelvic muscles or bladder to spasm. The urge to urinate translates to a physiological reaction in your body and urination then can’t be delayed. In short: You feel like you have to go, and so you have to go.
High Urinary Frequency
Patients who need to get up regularly to urinate at work, or who wake multiple times in the night to urinate may be suffering from high urinary frequency.
How Long Does Bladder Retraining Take?
Everyone will have a slightly different experience with these pelvic floor and bladder retraining exercises. You can typically expect to spend 6-12 weeks before you reach your goals for urinary frequency and control. The important thing is to make a sustained and consistent effort toward your goal with support from a physical therapy practitioner.
Consult IMPACT Physical Therapy & Sports Recovery for Bladder Retraining
IMPACT Physical Therapy & Sports Recovery has been providing wellness and recovery services to the Chicago area since 2016. We support patients from all walks of life in a warm, modern environment that is highly professional and supportive, and from a range of convenient locations.
Request an appointment with one of our experienced and dedicated staff and begin your bladder retraining journey.
