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Yoga could help women who suffer from urinary incontinence, new research suggests.
It can improve pelvic health and help women gain more control over their bladders.
U.S. researchers found it can also prevent accidental urine leakage.
‘Yoga is often directed at mindful awareness, increasing relaxation, and relieving anxiety and stress,’ said first author Alison Huang, assistant professor in the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.
Yoga can help women who suffer from urinary incontinence, new research suggests (file picture)
‘For these reasons, yoga has been directed at a variety of other conditions - metabolic syndrome or pain syndromes - but there's also a reason to think that it could help for incontinence as well.’
The researchers recruited 20 women who were 40 years old and older and who suffered urinary incontinence on a daily basis.
Half were randomly assigned to take part in a six week yoga therapy programme and the other half were not.
The women who took part in the yoga programme experienced an overall 70 per cent reduction in the frequency of their urine leakage.
The group that did not start yoga therapy only had a 13 per cent improvement.
Yoga can strengthen the pelvic floor muscles making women better able to control their bladders (file picture)
Most of the observed improvement in incontinence was in stress incontinence, or urine leakage brought on by activities that increase abdominal pressure such as coughing, sneezing, and bending over.
The researchers believe yoga can improve urinary incontinence through more than one mechanism.
Because incontinence is associated with anxiety and depression, women suffering from incontinence may benefit from yoga's emphasis on meditation and relaxation.
But, regular practice of yoga may also help women strengthen the muscles of the pelvic floor that support the bladder and protect against incontinence.
‘We thought this would be a good opportunity for women to use yoga to become more aware of, and have more control over, their pelvic floor muscles,’ Dr Huang said.
Approximately 25 million adults in America suffer from some form of urinary incontinence, according to the National Association for Continence.
Up to 80 per cent of them are women. Urinary incontinence becomes more common as women age, although many younger women also suffer from it.
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