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As you age certain parts of your body get larger (like your nose or ears) while other parts shrink, like your bladder.

Yikes! That's bad news for those with women's urinary incontinence. Leaking urine is bad enough, but the fact that the condition might worsen with aging due to a shrinking bladder can be downright depressing.

At age 25, the average person's bladder can hold about two cups of urine before it has to be emptied. By age 65, that amount decreases to just one cup. That means twice as many trips to the bathroom.

Bladder Health: What to Do About the Shrinking Bladder
So what does a woman do about her incredible shrinking bladder? That's a good question.

The answer is simple: train your bladder.

If you are otherwise fairly healthy, you can train your bladder so that you go when you want to, rather than when your bladder dictates you must. With bladder training, you are taking steps toward restoring bladder health.

Bladder Training and Bladder Health
The goal of bladder training is to learn to urinate before you have the urgent urge to go, or after you successfully reduce or eliminate the urge. Learning to urinate before the urgent need is upon you helps because running for the bathroom only makes urine leakage worse. Running tends to jiggle the abdominal organs, which increases the pressure on your bladder ... and you end up with urine leakage.

With bladder training you focus on increasing the amount of time between urination. This technique is most effective for women with stress urinary incontinence or urge urinary incontinence (also called overactive bladder).

How to Train Your Bladder
To train your bladder, start out by urinating every two hours during the day, whether or not you feel you have to go. After you have successfully mastered this schedule, gradually increase the time between urination by half hour increments, until you reach four hours. Four hours is a reasonable period of time between urination, and at this point you won't find the urge to go interfering with your life.

During bladder training, if you feel the urge to go during the two hour window, stop what you are doing and remain still. At the same time, perform a pelvic floor muscle contraction, also called a Kegel. Squeeze your pelvic floor muscles several times quickly, and do not relax fully between squeezes. These are similar to "quick Kegels," and will help suppress the urge to urinate. Also stay calm and take deep breaths. Once the urge has passed, walk slowly to the bathroom while continuing to do some quick Kegels.

Bladder Health Takes Practice
As with all new exercises, bladder training takes practice. Don't worry if your first attempts at doing this exercise don't succeed. Just stay focused and keep practicing. Eventually your pelvic floor muscles will become much stronger and you will feel the urgent urge to go less frequently. Also consult your physician to see if there are other conservative therapies that will complement bladder training.

Finally, if you are not sure how to do a correct pelvic floor muscle contraction (and about half of all women are not), check out our step-by-step ebook that gives you step by step instructions.

Download the "What's Up Down There" ebook here.

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