Urinary incontinence is the inability to hold urine inside the body resulting in accidental spills of urine. For men, prevalence of urinary incontinence rises with age. Luckily, while the body is still young, urinary incontinence is treatable.
There are three forms of urinary incontinence: the stress incontinence, the urge incontinence and the overflow incontinence. Stress incontinence involves body actions such as sneezing, coughing and lifting that put pressure on the bladder determining involuntarily leakage of urine. In men, stress incontinence occurs usually after a prostatectomy (removal of all or a part of the prostate gland) and it is the most common form of incontinence. Urge incontinence consists in an accidentally loss of urine that succeeds an overwhelming need to urinate that cannot be held. Patients who suffer from this kind of incontinence have a unstable, spastic or overactive bladder and can experiment urge incontinence during sleep, after drinking water or when they hear water running or touch it. Overflow incontinence is best described as urinating often and in small quantities. Weak bladder muscles that determine the incapacity to empty the bladder or a blocked urethra can cause this form of incontinence.

Problems with urinary incontinence appear when the muscles and the brain stop working correctly and urine cannot longer be kept in the bladder so it will be released involuntarily. This happens when the nerves loose the signals they are suppose to carry form the brain to the bladder and sphincter muscles. Those signals are orders to open the bladder and release the urine and can be affected if a disease, injury or condition damages the brain. That is why men who have spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis or diabetes may develop bladder problems such as “overactive bladder” – a condition followed by the need to urinate more than eight times a day and more than two times at night. This is a form of urinary retention meaning the inability to empty the bladder. Once the body ages, the main cause of urinary retention is the prostate because it gets enlarged and it results in a condition called benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH).

While suffering from urinary retention, men can’t start a stream or find it difficult to empty their bladder. Comparing it to urinary incontinence which made the body urinate involuntarily, in this case the body can’t urinate as often as if feels is has to urinate. Sometimes, men who suffer from urinary retention can’t urinate at all despite the fact that they have a full bladder. The urinary retention causes are the same as the ones in case of a urinary incontinence: nerve damages that block the signals that the bladder sends to the brain. That is why the body can’t release the urine: because the brain doesn’t know that the bladder is full and the muscles that squeeze urine out may not receive the signal that it is time to do it. A slow bladder muscle could also be a cause for retention.
Both condition cause a lot of discomfort and affect personal and sexual life. Acute urinary retention can lead even to pain because the lower belly starts to bloat. Urinary incontinence is very intrusive because, besides being stressful, it has a profound impact on the quality of a patient’s life.