Urinary incontinence is a condition that impacts many people’s lives. When you have incontinence, you may experience bladder control issues and leak urine. This leakage is often uncontrollable and can negatively impact your life.
Your urinary system is made up of the kidneys, ureters, bladder, and urethra. These parts do several jobs. They filter, store, and remove waste from your body. Your kidneys are the filters of your body. Waste products are removed from your blood by the kidneys, creating urine. The urine then moves down through two thin tubes called the ureters. The ureters connect to the bladder, where the urine will collect until it’s time to leave the body. Your bladder is like a storage tank — once the bladder is full, the brain sends a signal that it’s time to urinate. Urine then leaves the bladder when a muscle opens up (sphincter), allowing the urine to flow freely out of the body through the urethra.

When this system is working smoothly, you usually have time to get to a bathroom before needing to urinate and you don’t experience any leakage of urine. Urinary incontinence can happen when these parts don’t operate as they should. This can happen for many different reasons throughout your life.

Urinary incontinence is the involuntary leakage of urine. It means a person urinates when they do not want to. Control over the urinary sphincter is either lost or weakened.

Urinary incontinence is more common among women than men. The chances of it happening increase with age, Obesity, and smoking are both risk factors for urinary incontinence.

Incontinence can happen for many reasons, following different mechanisms. Keep in mind that boundaries between types of incontinence are often not clear, and different mechanisms are arguably found to be combined.