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Urinary Incontinence

Urinary incontinence is the leaking of urine and having little to no control on your bladder. It can affect men and women of all ages. It is not just a medical problem but also a psychological, emotional and social problem. We don’t exactly know that how many people suffer from urinary incontinence because many of them don’t even report their condition to a doctor, because they are embarrassed and prefer to suffer in silence rather than questioned and get treated for this disease.

Many people think that this is just a part of getting older, but what they don’t know is that people from all age groups can be affected by it. The severity of urinary incontinence ranges from the accidental and occasional leakage of urine after sneezing or coughing to having the urge to urinate with such urgency that you get stressed about not reaching the toilet on time.

Symptoms

Some people can have minor leaks of urine while others might wet their clothes occasionally or regularly. If you suffer from any of the symptoms or types of urinary incontinence explained below, consult your doctor immediately to remedy this problem.

Stress Incontinence – When you cause stress to your bladder during coughing, sneezing, exercising, laughing or by lifting something heavy.

Urge Incontinence – When you have an intense and sudden urge to urinate immediately after the loss of urine involuntarily. This also includes the urge to urinate throughout the night several times and can be caused by neurological disorders or diabetes.

Overflow Incontinence – When you experience constant or frequent dribbling or urine. This often happens to people who have a bladder that never completely empties.

Functional Incontinence – When you are unable to make it to the toilet in time due to a physical or mental impairment. For example, arthritis can disable you from unbuttoning your pants quickly enough to urinate, which can cause involuntary urination.

Mixed Incontinence – When you suffer from one or more types of urinary incontinence.

When Should You Go See A Doctor?

You may feel embarrassed or uncomfortable while discussing such a problem with a doctor, but if your urinary incontinence is frequent and constant or it is affecting the quality of your life and disabling your social life, it is inherent that you seek medical advice and follow any treatment that is prescribed to you. It is crucial that you seek medical help for urinary incontinence, because it may be a precursor of an underlying serious condition and it can cause you to limit your social activities and interactions or even physical activities. In older adults, if the condition is left untreated, it can become the reason for falling as they might struggle to rush to the toilet.

Causes

Urinary incontinence is in essence not a disease; rather, it’s a symptom of physical conditions, underlying medical conditions or emotional pr psychological conditions. Only a thorough examination done by a doctor can help you understand the reason behind your urinary incontinence.

Temporary Urinary Incontinence

Certain medications, foods and drinks can enhance urination and stimulate your bladder to produce more urine than normal. They are:

  • Caffeine
  • Tea or decaffeinated coffee
  • Alcohol
  • Corn syrup
  • Carbonated drinks
  • Artificial sweeteners
  • Foods high in sugar, acid or spice especially citrus fruits
  • Medication for heart problems, high blood pressure and muscle relaxants
  • Excessive doses of vitamin B or C

Urinary Tract Infection

Urinary Tract Infection can also cause urinary incontinence. This type of infection irritates your bladder causing you to feel strong urges to urinate. Other symptoms of UTI are strong or foul-smelling urine or a feeling a burning sensation when you are urinating.

Constipation

Constipation is another cause of urinary incontinence. Our rectum is anatomically located quite close to our bladder and share many similar nerves. If the stool is hard and compacted, this can cause these nerves to overreact and increase the frequency of urinary release.

Persistent Urinary Incontinence

Urinary incontinence can be a permanent or persistent condition that can be caused by several physical problems such as:

Pregnancy – Hormonal changes and increase in weight can cause stress incontinence.

Childbirth – Vaginal delivery can weaken muscles that are essential for urination control and can sometimes damage bladder nerves and supportive tissue.

Age – Changes that come with age and the aging of the bladder can decrease the bladder’s ability to store urine.

Hysterectomy – in women, many ligaments support the bladder and nerves and a surgery involving a reproductive organ may damage or affect the pelvic floor muscles, thus leading to urinary incontinence.

Enlarged prostate – In men, urinary incontinence usually occurs due to the enlargement of prostate gland, which is also known as benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Prostate cancer –Untreated prostate cancer can be the primary cause of urge or stress incontinence or can be a side effect of medications prescribed to treat it.

Neurological disorders – A spinal injury, multiple sclerosis, a stroke, Parkinson’s disease or a brain tumour can interfere with the nerve signals that are related to bladder control and can cause urinary incontinence.

Obstruction – A tumour, anywhere in the urinary tract can block the natural flow of urine and can cause overflow incontinence or urine leakage.

Menopause – Women start producing less oestrogen, which is essential for keeping the lining of the urethra and bladder healthy. Such deterioration in tissue can aggravate urinary incontinence.

Flibanserin for Female Sexual Dysfunction

Flibanserin is a newly formulated drug that is used to counter decreased sex drive in women by boosting their libido. Referred to as female Viagra, this medication managed to ignite the debate of medicine and sexuality. Let’s take a closer look at Flibanserin, and how this unique formula was discovered.

Flibanserin – What you Need to Know

This latest contender was developed by Boehringer Ingelheim, a German firm. Flibanserin essentially belongs to a broad class of medications that are used for treating depression, like Zoloft, Prozac, Welbutrin, etc. As a matter of fact, this libido enhancing medication was originally developed for treating depression, but clinical trials proved the drug to be ineffective at countering its symptoms. Depression medications function by correcting the chemical imbalance in your brain. However, Flibanserin proved to be ineffective in that regard, but yielded a surprising conclusion to the Clinical Trials. You can find our more here.

Clinical Trials Results

As the clinical trials failed to yield expected results, the survey conducted post trial revealed that Flibanserin actually turned out to be a rather effective medication for boosting the libido in women who were experiencing reduced sex drive. A large sample of women, who participated in the trial experienced, significant boost in their sexual drive and desires.

Soon after these surprising results started coming to light, 3 more Flibanserin trials were launched to further facilitate the investigation of its full extent of effects on female libido. A sample of 5,000 volunteers included women whose age ranged between 18 and 40, all of whom were suffering from HSDD (or hypoactive sexual desire disorder) and/or unnaturally deficient sex drive.

In the culture of westerners, an undying belief is that there’s a pill for whatever seems to ail them. This partially provides some insight into Viagra’s tremendous performance. Staying true to the long upheld tradition, there is now a medication that can be used for treating HSDD.

The Good and the Bad

In addition to successful clinical trials, the wide acceptance of this medication is due to its effects of enhancing arousal, sexual desires, as well as urge frequency. Nevertheless, just as every medication, Flibanserin too has side effects that affected about 15 percent volunteers in the trial. While you can rest assured that the effects of this medication are not instant, but may prove to be longer lasting.

While, there aren’t many known remedies of increasing sexual drive and desire in women, Flibanserin may just be the answer to your problems. In order to be sure that Flibanserin is the right medication for you, remember to consult your primary healthcare physician. When it comes down to it, the condition HSDD is not due to the imbalance of neurotransmitters, rather because of psychological disturbances.

Despite the glaring evidence, there are still a large number of people that believe HSDD is a problem that stems from physiological symptoms. Although partially true, an effective way to overcome this issue is figuring out your partner’s most dominant sexual desires and doing your part to accommodate those fantasies. There are a variety of cases in which patients were able to overcome reduced libido by turning away from medication and focusing entirely on the relationship with their significant other.

We recommend further reading on HSDD at this website.

Flibanserin in the UK

Flibanserin has been approved in the US only. This medication is not available in the UK so if you ask your GP to prescribe it, they will be unable to do so – even if they consider it to be appropriate for you.

It is likely that the licence holder will be applying for a marketing authorisation in the EU in the not too distant future.

New Gonorrhoea Strain Discovered

Over the last thirty years, it has become increasingly difficult to treat gonorrhea with antibiotics, thanks to the bacteria’s ongoing, and increasing resistance to available treatments. According to a new report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a new strain of the bacteria has been discovered in Australia and alarmingly, this bacterium seems to be resistant to the only treatment options available currently. The discovery of this new strain indicates the need to act fast and find another treatment for what might soon become an untreatable sexually transmitted infection.

The recommended antibiotic treatment for gonorrhea is ceftriaxone, which is thought to be the most effective of the few options still available today. This new strain, A8806, which was found in a woman travelling around the country, does not respond to ceftriaxone however.

The worry here is that we do not know how common the strain is, where it started to spread, and whether or not it even exists in other countries outside of Australia. According to the authors of the report, if the strain does exist elsewhere, it is possible that it is simply not being detected. All we know for now is that the woman who presented with the infection was a European, travelling at the time in Australia. The man she had had intercourse with, one week prior, was also a European traveller.

The woman was subsequently treated with an injection of ceftriaxone and azithromycin taken orally, with success. She tested negative for gonorrhea two months after the strain was first discovered. This would not necessarily be the case for everyone who presented with this resistant strain however. This strain is likely not to respond to current treatment options but this is not definitive. It is also hard to know which of the two treatments won out in the end in this particular case but it is thought that this strain has some sensitivity to azithromycin. Without a doubt, there now exists a resistant strain of gonorrhea that is resistant to our safety gonorrhea treatment, ceftriaxone, among an array of other antibiotics that used to work, which is a potentially serious problem the world over.

In many ways it was fortuitous that the woman was travelling in Australia at the time since research and surveillance on sexually transmitted infection in this country is unparalleled. It might not have been picked up somewhere else. It might not have been caught anywhere else either, but we just cannot be sure about this at the moment. It’s now time for other countries to test for this strain. Once again, the race is on for a gonorrhea treatment that the bacterium will not resist. You can read more about Australia’s race to beat Gonorrhoea here.

Often people who are infected with gonorrhea do not present with symptoms. In this case, they are unlikely to get tested and will continue to spread the infection to new partners. Untreated gonorrhea can lead to infertility and other unpleasant complications in both males and females. The only way to steer clear of the infection is to get tested before new partners and use protection. This infection, like all other STIs can be passed on via unprotected oral and anal sex also. If symptoms are present they will likely include a burning sensation when urinating, a white, green or yellow discharge and painful or swollen testes in males. While there is so much uncertainty regarding the future for gonorrhea treatment, good sexual health practice is vital.

There have been reports of a new medication that may help in the fight against gonorrhoea and you can read more about that at this UK based sexual health testing website – www.theSTIclinic.com

UK to spend £1 Billion to fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Recently the UK vowed to devote a billion pounds to the fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria through donating to the Global Fund. The commitment is expected to save “a life every three minutes”. This donation makes the UK a prime donor of the cause, second only to the USA.

This donation has been praised by Bill Gates, co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who has further suggested other countries to follow the UK’s example. These diseases are preventable and treatable but remain “among the world’s biggest killers” said Ms Greening, International Development Secretary, at the UN General Assembly.

This can only be a great step forward to limiting, once and for all, the number of people infected and the number of lives lost due to these diseases.

For more information, please go to http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/uk-pledges-1bn-to-battle-aids-tb-and-malaria–some-of-worlds-most-devastating-preventable-diseases-8835472.html

Mom Sarah Watson Living with HIV

Recently a woman, interviewed on ”iTV This Morning“, has shared her shocking story of how she contracted the HIV virus. She told the story of how she met her ex-boyfriend in 2007 and of how it was not until 2010 that she found out she was infected.

When Sarah Watson, mother of two, started dating Henry Assumang, she had no idea he was HIV positive. He never told her in the months they were together. Less than two years afterwards, they broke up because, she says, his behaviour changed and she started to find it hard to trust him.

She only found out in 2010 that she had contracted the virus when the police knocked on her door to ask whether she had had intercourse with Mr. Assumang. Her ex-boyfriend however died earlier this August and always denied that he had the virus. However, he was already receiving treatment in 2006. He was charged with grievous bodily harm (GBH); however, he died before he could be trialled.

Ms. Watson is now living with the virus and is still very worried. When she tested positive, the doctors had told her she only had a few months to live.

This story shows how it is always hard to trust a partner. It is important to talk about sexually transmitted infections (STIs) with the partner but nobody should stop at that. When starting a new relationship, it is highly recommended to get tested as that is the only way to find out whether one has HIV or any other STI.

Getting tested has become easier these days. Also, it is essential to remember that the earlier one gets tested for HIV, the easier it is to treat the disease. Lots of improvements have been done to cure HIV in the past few years, however it is still an infection that can be fatal. Again, if you think you are at risk of having contracted the virus, you should get tested as soon as you can.

The new post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) may help to not contract HIV if a person is infected and starts the treatment within 72 hours of being in contact with the virus. HIV is a serious infection and there is no cure. However, the earlier you cure, the more chances there are for one to live his/her life as close to normal as possible.