Leaking when you laugh, cough or lift?
answered by Dr. Vaibhav Desai, MD, Jonesboro.

The pelvic floor is a sling of muscle that supports the bladder and the urethra. When it weakens, pressure from a cough, a sneeze or a jump is no longer fully resisted, and a small amount of urine escapes. That is stress urinary incontinence.

It is different from a sudden, urgent need to go that you cannot put off, which has other causes.

It is common after childbirth and around menopause. Many women have never mentioned it to anyone. If you have stopped running, stopped jumping with your children, or started wearing a pad as insurance, that is the same problem described differently.

Most women say the hardest part was booking.

VTone uses intravaginal electrical muscle stimulation. In plain terms, it makes the pelvic floor muscles contract and release, repeatedly, in a way that is hard to achieve reliably on your own. Most women describe a tightening and releasing, like the muscles exercising by themselves. It is unfamiliar rather than painful, and you can ask to stop at any point.

It is not surgery. There is nothing to cut and nothing to recover from the way you would after an operation.

Many women have been told to do pelvic floor exercises for years without being sure they are doing them correctly. VTone works the same muscle, but it does the contractions for you and does not depend on technique.

VTone is delivered as a course of appointments rather than one visit, because muscle strength is built by repetition. How many sessions you need, and how far apart, is set at your consultation from what the assessment shows, rather than published as an average.

Strength is maintained rather than banked, so your physician tells you what keeping it up looks like. Individual results vary.

The useful measure is not a percentage. It is whether you can cough without bracing, whether the pad is still needed, and whether you have stopped avoiding the things you used to do.

If the leaking comes with an urgent need to go, or with pain, blood or a fever, that needs assessing before any treatment. Call the clinic on (870) 230-0844 and say so rather than booking a course.

This is general information, not advice about your own health. The assessment is the part that decides whether VTone is the right treatment for you.

You are dressed from the waist up throughout, the room is private, you can bring someone with you, and nothing is photographed. Few clinics in the region treat this, and women come to our clinic in Jonesboro from about 30 minutes away in Paragould and about 45 minutes away in Walnut Ridge. Because it is a course, tell us you are travelling and the sessions can be spaced to suit the drive.

More on the VTone page, and on everything else in women’s wellness.