Women's urinary incontinence is a real pain in the panties! Luckily, if you are a woman who has urinary incontinence, you are not powerless because knowledge is power.

The more you know about urinary incontinence, the more you can act as your own powerful healthcare advocate.

If you have stress urinary incontinence, then here's some information you'll want to know: there are actually two types of stress urinary incontinence.

The Two Types of Stress Urinary Incontinence
As the name suggests, with stress urinary incontinence you leak urine when you put stress on your abdominal cavity. This can happen when you sneeze, cough, step off a curb, or jump around during aerobics class. Depending on the severity of your case, "stress" can range from something as powerful as a high kick in a karate class to something as low-key as standing up.

So why does "stress" to the abdominal cavity cause urine leakage? There are two reasons, hence two types of stress urinary incontinence. The two types are:

• urethral hypermobility
• intrinsic sphincteric deficiency (ISD)

With urethral hypermobility, when the abdominal pressure increases, the urethra shifts position, allowing urine to leak out. With ISD, the urethra doesn't move but the ring of muscles that seal the bladder and keep it from leaking does not seal properly, which also allows urine leakage.

Most physicians believe that the majority of women with stress urinary incontinence have at least some degree of ISD.

What You Can Do About Stress Urinary Incontinence
There are many conservative therapies that you can try to alleviate your urinary leakage problems. For instance, many physicians recommend one or more of the following:

• Kegels or pelvic floor muscle exercises (more info in our free ebook)
• Weight loss
• Stopping smoking
• Medication
• Avoidance of certain food or drinks

Even if you have tried one of these therapies with little or no success, it's worth your while to combine two or more of therapies to see if you get a better result. Many women cannot resolve their urine leakage with a single approach, but have good results when they combine conservative treatments. Give it a try!

If you enjoyed this post, please leave a comment, contact us, download our ebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdclxvi/108038435/