Traveling with Bladder Issues: Tips for Stress and Urge Incontinence

In this episode, I address the challenges many women face when traveling with bladder issues, particularly around the holidays. With comprehensive advice on managing urge incontinence and stress incontinence while traveling. For those with urge incontinence, I offer three key tips:

• Identifying bladder irritants and avoiding them on travel days
• Practicing urge suppression techniques
• Consulting a physician about short-acting bladder medications

For women with stress incontinence, I suggest using over-the-counter pessaries such as Impressa or Uresta. Additionally, I highlight the importance of having a backup plan, like wearing incontinence pads or underwear and using bathroom finder apps to alleviate travel anxiety. The overall goal is to help women travel confidently and enjoyably without being hindered by bladder issues.

Timeline:

00:28 Introduction to Traveling with Bladder Issues

01:18 Understanding Your Type of Incontinence

01:30 Tips for Managing Urge Incontinence

06:20 Tips for Managing Stress Incontinence

07:25 General Travel Preparation Tips

09:05 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Hi there. I wanted to talk to you today about traveling. We're getting close to the holidays and this is a time where a lot of us are traveling to see family, friends, or maybe just to get out of town. But for lots of women who have bladder issues, traveling can create a lot of anxiety. Over the years, I've seen lots of women who stopped traveling because of their bladders. 

I want all of you to be able to live your best lives, and for many that includes travel. So I want to talk to you about the things that you can do to make traveling with a bad bladder a little bit easier and to quell the anxiety that's associated with it. I think this is such an important thing to get ahead of before you start giving up things that you really enjoy.

Okay, so the first thing that you need to know. is what type of leaking you have. Do you have stress incontinence? Do you have urge incontinence? Do you have both?  If you are someone who has urge incontinence, I have three tips for you.  So the first one is to know your bladder irritants. Now, I don't want you to be able to recite everything that upsets the bladder.

This isn't a test, but I do want you to know what aggravates your own bladder. That way, you're When you're passing Dutch Bros in the airport, you can decide if stopping there is a good choice for you or not.  This is homework you have to do before you travel.  The best way to figure out what your bladder irritants are is to journal what you eat and drink.

and when you have bladder symptoms. Then you can correlate what is causing the bladder symptoms. If there's anything that you're ingesting that might be causing these symptoms or worsening these symptoms.  So you probably want to start by reviewing a list of bladder irritants, and you can find one on my website.

The list of Bladder irritants is pretty long. The common ones that we think about are caffeine. And remember that decaf coffee still has some caffeine in it, and this can upset some bladders.  Alcohol. Carbonation is a bladder irritant, including sparkling water. And this is one that many women don't think of.

They think they're drinking sparkling water and this is a healthy choice, and they're not paying attention to what it might be doing to their bladder.  Citrus, including lime, lemon, and orange are bladder irritants. Tomato based foods can be bladder irritants. Spice and MSG can be bladder irritants. So you want to do this homework so you know what upsets your own system.

And then you can avoid it on your travel day. So tip one, know your bladder irritants and do this homework before you travel.  Tip number two is get really good at urge suppression. So urge suppression is a technique that we use that decreases bladder contractions, which is what causes that sense of urge and urge symptoms.

It works best like many things. If you have a strong pelvic floor and an urge suppression, what we have you do is we have you do five quick contractions. So five quick kegels. And when you do that and you're contracting those muscles, it tells your bladder to stop contracting and relax. And that urge will go away.

So you do those five quick contractions and then you need to do something to distract yourself while you're waiting for that urge to go away. So you might meditate, you might visualize. a calming place. You might have a mantra, but you have to have something to do to calm yourself. And then once that urge goes away, you can calmly walk to the bathroom.

So urge suppression and getting good at it is tip number two.  Tip number three is to think about asking your physician for a medication. So there are lots of medications that can help with overactive bladder.  There are many patients and women who use these medications daily, but some women don't feel like they need a medication because they can manage their symptoms at home, and their bladder might only be a problem when they're traveling or when they're outside their home environment. 

Some of these medications are short acting, and so you could take them for a short period, like with traveling, or maybe even only on a flight.  Now, the one thing I would warn you about is if this sounds like a great idea to you and you want to try a medication the next time you fly, this is something that you want to try when you're at home.

Before you try it on an airplane. The last thing you want to do is to try a new medication and maybe have some unexpected side effect when you're in a plane or you're away from home. So you want to try it at home so that you know how it impacts your system. And then if you feel good about that medication and you know what it does to you. 

You can implement it the next time you fly. So tip number three is talk to your doctor about getting a short acting bladder medication. So those are my three tips for traveling with overactive bladder urge incontinence.  One, know your bladder irritants and avoid them on the day of travel. Two, Have a strong pelvic floor and really work at urge suppression.

And then three, consider a short acting medication that you might only use for travel.  Now if you're someone who has stress incontinence, so leaking with coughing, sneezing, exercise, And this worries you when you're traveling. This might be a great time for you to try a pessary. So there are over the counter pessaries that are available in the United States.

There are disposable ones, like the Impressa. I M P R E S S A. Which is distributed by the POISE brand, so you could try the Impresa to see if that works for you. You could also try the uta, which is U-R-E-S-T-A. The UTA is reusable and you can use it for up to a year, and it is now available over the counter.

So you could just Google those two pessaries. You could buy them online, have them sent to your house, try them at home, see how they work for you, and then wear them the next time that you're traveling. The great thing about pessaries is that you can wear them whenever you want to. You don't have to use them on a daily basis.

You can just use them In certain situations where you really don't want to leak  the other things that I would tell you about traveling with a difficult bladder, you should prepare, right? You want a safety plan, a just in case plan. This is a great time to wear a pad just in case. It's a great time to wear incontinence underwear just in case.

That way you have a backup plan  in case you leak. And then the other thing is that if you're someone who likes to know where the bathrooms are, and this can create some anxiety for you while you're traveling. There are bathroom finder apps. So these apps will show you where the bathrooms are. They're available.

Um, for us bathrooms, they're available for international bathrooms as well. They'll frequently tell you where the bathroom is. Um, they'll tell you about cleanliness. Um for european bathrooms, they'll frequently tell you what you need to use that bathroom. So if you need change, if you need a credit card, if there's any payment, no payment, that type of thing so that you can be prepared.

Um, and know where the bathrooms are and also how to get there.  So this is something that you can just Google. Um, there's sit and squat by Charmin. There's toilet finder. Um, there are some bathroom finders that are country specific, like show the loo. which is available for bathrooms in Australia. So I think if you prepare a little bit before you travel, these are some things that you can do to make traveling a little bit easier for you.

If you have mixed incontinence, you could try all of these things, right? You could try medication and a pessary at the same time. If you have stress incontinence, this might be a good time to try a pessary. Um, it might be a great time to really focus on figuring out what your irritants are and then avoiding them on the day of, uh, traveling. 

Um, but these little changes and little things can really give you a lot more confidence and minimize the anxiety when you're traveling. So happy travels and happy holidays.