Urinary incontinence is more common in women, who make up around 80% of suffers, and it can be a huge inconvenience at any age. Around one in four women over 18 are forced to cope with episodes of involuntary leakage but wait an average of six-and-a-half-years before seeking medical help. With advanced age, the prevalence of unwanted pee rises further, but with pelvic floor exercises thought to be a sound natural treatment for this urinary ailment, experts sought to find out whether low impact yoga could be a force for fighting back the flow. The results showed that not only is yoga of benefit, but that it actually performs about as well as most medical treatments.
How was the study carried out?
The study, published in ACP Journals, and carried out by scientists at Standford Medicine and the University of California, San Francisco, put participating women between the ages of 45 and 90 through 12 weeks of low-impact yoga. The subjects undertook two group yoga sessions per week along with a once-a-week session of self-directed Hatha yoga that focussed on the pelvic floor. Another group was assigned more generalized strength stretching exercises.
What were the results of the study?
Showing that working on physical fitness is a great way to combat incontinence, both groups reduced unwanted incidences by around 60% after 12 weeks. The women in the yoga group experienced 2.3 fewer urinary incontinence events per day, compared with the 1.9 fewer episode that the more general conditioning group experienced.
Medical treatments tend to show a 30-70% improvement, meaning that regular visits to the yoga class, or undertaking them via zoom, could be a healthier way to stay dry down below while getting your sweat pouring on the outside. Incontinence and overactive bladders strip women of the confidence to hit the gym or the yoga studio for exercise, and yet these may well be the very activities that will help them to gain more control found the experts.
Seeking to break the stigma around being terrified when away from the toilet, scientists are hoping to steer women towards physical activity as a way forward. “I’m impressed that exercise did so well and impressed that yoga did so well,” said the study’s senior author, Leslee Subak, MD, chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford Medicine. “One of the take-home messages from this study is ‘Be active!’”