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If you live with urinary incontinence, you should not resign yourself to it as a fact of life or sign of aging. While all people experiencing urinary incontinence experience it as a lack of bladder control resulting in some level of urinary leakage, it is usually a symptom of something else. In other words, it is a symptom of a larger condition.

If you are eager to understand more about the condition known as “stress incontinence,” you must first understand the more general meaning of incontinence. Generally, incontinence is defined as an “inability of the body to control the evacuative functions of urination or defecation : partial or complete loss of bladder or bowel control”.

Urinary incontinence is often described with words like “embarrassing” or “uncontrollable,” and these terms are part of the reason that almost all types of urinary incontinence fail to be reported quickly. In fact, it is not unusual for someone with symptoms of urinary leakage to wait an average of six years before consulting with a medical professional about it.

A 2014 report from the Centers for Disease Control entitled “Prevalence of Incontinence Among Older Americans,” detailed some surprising statistics. However, the report used a data set that made it impossible to supply any sort of averages because the data was sourced from:

Urinary incontinence ranks as one of the most under-reported symptoms among both men and women alike. This is due to a few basic misunderstandings:

Did you know that urinary incontinence is one of the most under-reported medical issues? This is for several very different reasons:

Maybe you provide care to a loved one or patient struggling with urine leakage? Do they say that it is very embarrassing, distressing, or uncontrollable? These are very commonly used adjectives when patients discuss their urinary incontinence.

It might be surprising to learn that 51% of women, overall, live with urinary incontinence. And though the numbers increase with age (a recent study determined it occurred at “13% in young, nulligravid women to 25% in reproductive-age, 47% in middle-age, 55% in postmenopausal, and 75% in older women“), it was around double the rate experienced by men.

From U.S.News & World Report: 

When there is anything going on with the bladder, it can be difficult to determine just what the problem might be, and it is because so many issues involve identical symptoms. As an example, those with overactive bladders may find that they can “no longer hold urine normally…[and] often feel a sudden urge to urinate or experience an accident.”