What causes Stress Urinary Incontinence?

If you didn’t see my video yesterday on what Stress Urinary Incontinence is, you may want to start there. If you did watch yesterday’s video, you might be thinking that jumping, sneezing 🤧, coughing, or laughing 😂 are the cause of stress incontinence. The reality is these are just the symptoms; the causes are a little deeper.
Stress Urinary Incontinence is caused by weakness in your pelvic floor. We have muscles that sit underneath our abdomen, these are the foundation of our core and they are known as our pelvic floor muscles. These muscles sit under the bladder and if you are sitting right now, you are sitting on them. We also have a muscle that is over our bladder, called the detrusor. Basically, whenever the pelvic floor muscles, sitting beneath the bladder, are too weak to close off the urethra it can cause any sort of leaking when we cough, sneeze, laugh, or jump. This weakness of the pelvic floor muscles is what causes stress urinary incontinence.
Healthy muscles are strong and flexible, unhealthy muscles are tight and weak. Sometimes the leakage is due to muscle weakness that is presenting as poor muscle coordination. So, every time we cough, sneeze, and laugh we actually should reflexively do a little Kegel; if that doesn't happen, that can cause leaking. Another presentation of weak muscles is over tightening of the pelvic floor muscles. If your muscles are too tight, then they're not allowed to do that small contraction when you cough or sneeze. When your pelvic floor muscles are already held up and tight, instead of doing they’re reflexive squeeze, the pelvic floor muscles are going to do their reflexive relaxation (or let go).