Overactive Baldder a Curse

Hello there. I know your post is from a while ago however wanted to say I can empathise with your situation and go through similar things, particularly feeling self-conscious at work about people noticing frequent toilet trips, and struggling on car journeys and outings. I hope that you might have been able to find some medical help and advice in the past few months.

Regarding your quesiton on alcohol and caffeine, personally even when I cut out caffeine completely the incontinence doesn't go away. If I drink a lot of certain types of tea or certain fizzy drinks it does get worse (oddly, I notice it more with tea than with coffee). But it doesn't go away if I have none and there is not a difference in my incontinence between whether I have no caffeine or, say, up to 3 cups of instant coffee in a day. Some days I can have had no caffeine and not much at all to drink but still pee a lot. Perhaps that varies from person to person.

From what I've read / been told, lots of people do find medication helps (and until recently, it helped me considerably). There are other treatment options as well and I hope that it's something your GP can advise you on and make referrals you may need, if you want this.

I certainly identify with what you say about journeys and trips out and being at work being horrible when you constantly need the toilet and/or have leakage. It makes you really anxious and restricts what you do. My symptoms got worse again recently and for the time being I'm having to adjust to how to manage this day to day, and as I said in another post, at the moment for me part of this is accepting that I need pads that give me enough protection at the inevitable times I leak heavily. I do find it upsetting to need them but on balance it's less awful than the alternative of having an accident in front of someone or constantly running to the toilet to try to avoid accidents. I know it isn't a solution to the problems, and hopefully you will find a treatment that lessens the frequency that you leak, but in the meantime and/or for the difficult situations it can be a way perhaps to make it less upsetting and less controlling of your life.

Really hope things may be getting better for you.

 

Hi

So sorry to hear of your problems. If you haven't already you should see a Dr. You can be helped. You may possibly have aUTI infection which is not always painful but could be making things a lot worse. I cut out caffeine for 2 months and it didn't make any difference. Pelvice floor exercises can help but I think you need medication and a good check over to see if there is a particular reason for your problem. I have had meds but sadly although they worked  I have had to come off them due to side effects but we are working on that at present!

Good luck

Pat

I have tried a lot of medicines for OAB and presently take Oxybutynin. It helps some and I also take pumpkin seed oil which also helps. I recommend trying the pumpkin seed oil first before any meds because a lot of people have had great success with it.