Urinary Incontinence
CAUSE
This is more likely to be a problem for women.
There are small muscles that surround the urethra that runs from the bladder to the outside world. These muscles get weak with any combination of time (aging) and trauma/stretching such as with childbirth. Thus, as a woman gets older and muscles weaker, incontinence can develop or worsen.
TREATMENT
The usual treatment consists of a surgical procedure where a foreign material is made into a sling that adds pressure to the bladder outlet thus tending to keep the urine in the bladder. There are situations where this might be necessary. However, our approach is to find physiologic (natural) answers for problems whenever possible.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do to help muscles become stronger is to provide testosterone.
As women age, they lose testosterone.
A young woman has around 1000x more testosterone than she does estradiol (estrogen). By age 40, these levels have typically already dropped a lot.
A very simple approach that is very helpful for many women with this problem is the use of testosterone in a cream form. This concentrated testosterone is placed right around the opening of the urethra and out into the area of the inner labia. Being very close to the weakened muscles, it tends to strengthen them especially. Of course levels of testosterone need to be monitored to keep them in an appropriate range.
This works great for most women with urinary incontinence.