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Bladder Health

Biofeedback

Biofeedback is a treatment used for bladder control problems and pelvic floor muscle disorders – or those muscles at the bottom of your pelvic area that prevent leakage of urine or stool. Biofeedback is the visual and/or auditory feedback of a biologic activity. In the case of pelvic floor biofeedback, a computer is used to show you how and when the pelvic muscles are responding. It is an important aid used to teach you how to gain better control over your muscle activities.

Biofeedback techniques have been used in connection with Kegel exercises or pelvic floor exercises to treat women with urinary stress and urge incontinence. Stress in this context does not refer to physiological stress, but rather to the rise in intra-abdominal pressure brought on by such activities as coughing, sneezing, jogging or lifting. Biofeedback-based continence training has also proven effective with urge incontinence (the urgent need to pass urine and the inability to get to the toilet in time).

The use of a computer to help demonstrate proper pelvic muscle exercises allows health care providers to go one step further than your basic Kegel exercises. Biofeedback can demonstrate in a step-by-step fashion ways to strengthen additional muscles that improve your pelvic floor strength.

Biofeedback also helps teach you how to relax the pelvic floor muscles. Similar to “muscle contraction” headaches, excess tension in the pelvic muscles can cause painful intercourse, frequent urination, constipation, difficulty with initiating urination, pelvic pain and even the inability to urinate. Learning to voluntarily relax the muscles through the use of biofeedback has been very beneficial to women with pelvic pain or pelvic floor spasm.

Biofeedback can be very successful in treating symptoms. If you’re interested in learning more, talk to your health care provider.