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Obesity and Incontinence
Losing Unwanted Weight May Help You Stay Dry
By Kelly Burgess
It's a well-known fact that some women experience incontinence during pregnancy because of pressure placed on the bladder by a growing uterus. What some might not know, however, is that obesity can also cause incontinence in men and women because of the pressure of fatty tissue on the bladder.
After giving birth, a pregnant woman's incontinence usually goes away because there is no longer pressure on the bladder. Likewise, among the many benefits of shedding excess pounds, incontinence due to obesity can often be reduced and sometimes eliminated through even moderate weight loss.
While increased weight pressing on the bladder is the basic cause of incontinence in the obese, Dr. Delbert Rudy, director of the North Texas Center for Urinary Control, notes that other factors also are involved. For example, incontinence can be provoked by an already weakened sphincter muscle, which controls the opening of the bladder.
"The reason that women of any weight leak when they cough or sneeze is because the sphincter muscle becomes weak," Dr. Rudy says. "This can happen for a variety of reasons and it's the actual cause of stress incontinence. If you're overweight, it's like putting a pack on your back – there's more pressure bearing down on that weak sphincter muscle and it exacerbates the problem. So where the weakness may be controllable in a woman of normal weight, it becomes less controllable in one [who] is obese."