Urinary Incontinence: Why Bladder Leaks Happen, and What You Can Do About It

Leaking when you laugh, cough, sneeze or lift something.  Or a sudden urge that arrives faster than you can get to a bathroom.  Many women never mention either one to anyone, including their doctor.

It is extremely common.  It is also not a normal part of getting older, and not something you have to accept, no matter how many times you have been told otherwise.

By the time you've finished reading this, you'll know which type of incontinence you have, why it's happening to you, and what the real options are.

On This Page:

Incontinence Symptoms: What You Might Have Noticed

We have all been in that group of friends laughing so hard that someone finally gasps "Stop, I'm going to pee my pants," and everyone laughs harder.  This is one of the oldest jokes there is.  

For a lot of women, it stopped being a joke a while ago.

Often incontinence starts off quite small, with a tiny little leak when doing something strenouous, or a sudden sneeze.  You may notice you started waking up in the night to use the bathroom, or find your bladder going from empty to need to pee very quickly.

For a lot of women the clearest sign isn't the leaking at all. It's the things they have quietly started doing about it. Crossing your legs before you cough. Knowing where the bathrooms are in every store you shop in. Going before you leave the house even though you don't need to. A pad, just in case, on days you'll be out. Skipping the class, or the run, or the trampoline.

Those adjustments happen one at a time, over years, and most women never connect them to each other until they see them written down together.

There are several types of urinary incontinence, and they do not have all same the same symptoms. We will get to the types of incontience in a bit, but for now, any of these listed below are symptoms of urinary incontinence:

  • Leaking during physical effort:  Coughing, sneezing, laughing, exercise, lifting, running, etc.
  • Waking up in the night to urinate
  • Sudden urges to use the bathroom
  • Having difficulty delaying urination
  • Using the bathroom more frequently

The Types of Incontinence: Which one do you have?

Not all leaking is the same problem, and the type you have decides what will actually help.

Stress Incontinence


You leak at the moment pressure lands on your bladder. Coughing, sneezing, laughing, running, jumping, lifting something heavy, standing up out of a chair, and for some women during sex.

The name confuses nearly everyone, so it's worth clearing up. The "stress" means physical pressure on the bladder. It has nothing to do with being stressed out.

What's happening is that your pelvic floor and the muscle that closes off your urethra aren't holding against a sudden increase in pressure from above. When the support underneath is weaker than it was, pressure wins.

This is the type most closely tied to pelvic floor strength, and the one most likely to respond to muscle work.

Urge Incontinence

A sudden, strong need to go that arrives faster than you can act on it. It usually comes with going more often than you used to, waking at night, and finding the feeling very hard to postpone once it starts.

This is a different mechanism. It involves the bladder muscle and the nerves controlling it rather than the strength of your pelvic floor, and it often goes by the name overactive bladder.

That difference is worth holding onto, because doing more kegels is not necessarily the answer here. If this is your pattern, bladder training is usually the first thing to try.

Mixed incontinence


Both stress incontinence and urge incontinence together. You leak when you sneeze or exercise, and you also get sudden urges you can't always hold.

This is very common, and if you recognized yourself in both descriptions above, this is probably you. Mixed usually needs both approaches: strengthening for the pressure leaks, bladder habits for the urgency.

Less Common Types

Three others are worth knowing about, because if one of them is what's happening, the rest of this page isn't your answer.

Overflow Incontinence:  The bladder doesn't empty properly, fills past what it can hold, and leaks. Often a dribble rather than a gush, and often alongside a feeling that you never quite finish.

Functional Incontinence: The bladder works normally, but getting to a bathroom in time is the problem, usually because of mobility or another physical limitation.

Temporary Incontinence: A urinary tract infection, a new medication or a short illness can all cause leaking that stops when the cause is dealt with.

Leaking that is new, unexplained, or doesn't match any of the patterns above is worth having looked at by a health care professional.

Why Does Incontinence Happen?

There isn't one cause. Staying dry depends on several things working together: the bladder itself, the urethra, the nerves signaling between them, the pelvic floor muscles underneath, and the tissue holding it all in position. Incontinence shows up when something in that system stops doing its part.

That's why two women with the same symptom can need completely different treatment.

What the pelvic floor has to do with it


Your pelvic floor is a sheet of muscle across the base of your pelvis. It supports the bladder, the bowel and the other pelvic organs, and it has a direct role in whether urine stays where it should.

When those muscles contract, they squeeze the urethra closed and hold it closed. When they relax, you can go. In a system that's working, this happens without you thinking about it, including in the split second before you cough.

If the muscles are weak, they may not get there fast enough, or may not hold hard enough when pressure spikes. That is the mechanism behind most stress incontinence.

Weakness isn't the only way a pelvic floor causes problems, though. Some women have muscles that are too tight and don't release properly, and for them strengthening makes things worse rather than better. Pelvic floor tightness often comes with pelvic pain, so pain is the signal to get assessed before starting any strengthening program.

What contributes to incontinence

Below are the most common contributors to urinary incontinence. Most women have several of these contributors, layered over years: a pregnancy, a long labor, a stretch of lifting children or lifting at work, then menopause two decades later. Any one of them on its own might have caused no trouble at all. Together they add up, which is part of why incontinence so often arrives without one obvious cause you can point to.

  • Pregnancy
  • Vaginal childbirth
  • PreiMenupause / Menopause and the drop in estrogen
  • Aging
  • Pelvic floor weakness
  • Pelvic organ prolapse
  • Chronic constipation and straining
  • Certain medications
  • Urinary tract problems
  • Neurological conditions
  • Previous pelvic surgery
  • Smoking, largely because of the coughing that comes with it
  • Excess body weight
  • Long periods of inactivity

Some of these contributors you can do something about. The more useful question isn't which one started it, but which of them are still active now, and what can you do about them.

What You Can Do About Incontinence

Most women improve without surgery. What works depends on which type you have, so if you skipped past the types section, that's the part worth going back for.

For stress incontinence, the first thing to try is pelvic floor muscle training. For urge incontinence, it's bladder training. For mixed incontinence, it's both. Everything else sits behind those.

Pelvic floor muscle training

This is the kegel, and it is the most studied non-surgical approach to incontinence there is. The research shows pelvic floor muscle training reduces leakage in women, particularly where pelvic floor weakness is behind stress incontinence.

The movement itself is simple. Squeeze, hold, release completely. The hold is what builds strength, and the full release matters as much as the squeeze does.

To find the muscles, imagine stopping yourself from passing gas, and lift that area up and inward. That inward lift is the right sensation. Pushing down is the wrong one.

Two things to know before you start. Don't practice kegels while you're actually urinating, because doing that regularly can interfere with emptying properly. And the goal isn't to hold your pelvic floor clenched all day. A pelvic floor that can't relax is a problem of its own.

Where YoniFlex comes in

This is the problem YoniFlex was built around.

Rather than asking you to find the right muscle and hope you've found it, the device contracts the muscle for you. A small probe delivers a controlled electrical pulse, and the pelvic floor responds the way it would to a correct kegel. It fires whether or not you could have located it yourself, and it fires the same way in every session.

It isn't magic, and it isn't better than a kegel done properly. The research puts electrical stimulation and correct pelvic floor muscle training in roughly the same place. The difference is that one of them depends on you getting the technique right, and the other one doesn't.  

Manual Kegel exercises require a great deal of mental and physical exersion.  Some women's pelvic floor musces are so weak that they cannot physically perform a kegel exercise.  YoniFlex stimulates the muscles to to contract automatically, without you having to make the effort.  It essentailly becomes your brain, telling your muslces, OK now squeeze, and then, OK now relax.

We also sell optional YoniFlex patches, and those are for urge incontinence rather than stress incontiencne. Rather than contracting the pelvic floor directly, the pads work on the nerve signaling behind the sudden urge. Same device, different mode, different problem. That's why the FDA clearance covers both stress incontinence and urge incontinence rather than just one.  

YoniFlex is cleared by the FDA for stress incontinence and urge incontinence.A session takes [15-20] minutes, and the contractions are timed, held and released for you, so there's no counting and no wondering whether you held it long enough.

Two things it won't do.

It won't tell you which type of incontinence you have, and that still matters. Even with the pads, bladder training is an important part of healing from urge incontinence.  YoniFlex alongside it rather than instead of it.

If your pelvic floor is too tight rather than too weak, which usually shows up alongside pelvic pain, stimulation is not what you need. Get assessed before you buy anything.

The part nobody mentions

Here is the catch, and it's the reason a lot of women conclude kegels don't work for them.

When researchers have checked properly, rather than asking women whether they think they're doing it right, a large share aren't contracting the right muscles at all. A meaningful number are bearing down instead of lifting, which pushes in the wrong direction and can make leakage worse rather than better.

That isn't a failure of effort. A pelvic floor contraction is invisible. Nobody can see whether you've done it, including you, and written instructions leave you guessing. Most women who have been doing kegels for years have never had anyone confirm they're doing them right.

Bladder training for Urge Incontinence

If your pattern includes urge incontinence this is where to start. It costs nothing and it's what clinical guidelines recommend first.

The principle is that an overactive bladder has learned to signal early, at smaller volumes than it needs to. Bladder training teaches it to wait again.

Simple steps to begin bladder training for urge incontinence:


  • Keep a bladder diary for three or four days. Write down when you drink, when you go, when you feel urgency and when you leak. The patterns show up quickly and they're rarely what you expect.
  • Find your current gap between bathroom visits. If it's an hour, your first target is an hour and fifteen minutes.
  • When the urge arrives early, don't rush. Stop moving, sit down if you can, and breathe. Several quick pelvic floor squeezes will often settle it. The feeling usually peaks and falls within a minute or two rather than building forever.
  • Hold the new interval for a week, then add another fifteen minutes.
  • Keep going until you're at three to four hours between visits.

Two habits quietly work against this. Going just in case before you leave the house teaches the bladder to signal at smaller and smaller volumes, which is exactly backwards. And cutting fluids to reduce leaking concentrates your urine, which irritates the bladder and makes urgency worse.This takes weeks rather than days.

Everyday changes that help with bladder leaks

None of these fix incontinence by themselves. All of them reduce the load on a pelvic floor that's already working hard, and together they often decide whether symptoms are something you notice or something you plan around.

Deal with constipation. This is the one most women skip, and it may be the most useful on the list. Straining on the toilet puts heavy downward pressure on the pelvic floor, and a full bowel presses directly against the bladder. Fiber, fluid and movement, in that order.

Don't cut your fluids. The instinct is to drink less so there's less to leak. It backfires. Concentrated urine irritates the bladder and makes urgency worse, and you end up going just as often. If you're unsure how much is right for you, ask rather than guessing downward.

Test caffeine before you worry about anything else. Coffee, tea, energy drinks and some sodas irritate the bladder in a lot of women. You don't need to quit. Cut back for two weeks and see whether urgency changes. If it doesn't, caffeine isn't your problem and you can stop thinking about it.

Keep moving. Strength through your hips, trunk and legs takes load off the pelvic floor rather than adding to it. Be careful with advice to stop exercising, because it costs you strength you actually need.

If you smoke, the coughing is the real issue. A chronic cough means forceful downward pressure on the pelvic floor, many times a day, for years. It is one of the clearest links to stress incontinence there is.

Body weight plays a part. Extra weight increases the constant downward pressure on the pelvic floor, and for women carrying a significant amount, losing some of it reduces leaking measurably. It's a slow lever rather than a quick one, and one to work through with your doctor rather than alone.

When the basics aren't enough

For the majority of women, focusing on muscle strenghtneing eihter through correctly done kegel exercises or a pelvic floor trainer such as YoniFlex, a significant amount of iprovment in boht stress incontencne and urge incontience can be had.

If you've done the muscle strengthening and the bladder training properly for three months and nothing has shifted, that's useful information rather than a failure. It usually means something else is going on, and the next step is an assessment rather than more of the same.

An incontinence pessary. Two different devices get called by this name, and they're easy to confuse. A prolapse pessary holds organs in position. An incontinence pessary is a different shape, with a small knob that supports the urethra when pressure rises. It's the second one that's relevant to leaking.

It works mechanically and it works immediately, which is the appeal. It has to be fitted by a clinician, and getting the right size usually takes two or three attempts. Some women wear one only for exercise or long days on their feet rather than all the time.  Keep in mind that a pessary may help with the problem, but it won't help against the underlying issues behind the problem.

Procedures and surgery. This is the end of the road rather than a step along it. Surgery is considered when leaking is significant, when it's genuinely interfering with your life, and when conservative treatment has had a real attempt and hasn't worked. For stress incontinence, a sling is the most common procedure.

One thing worth knowing here, because it causes a lot of unnecessary fear. Mesh slings for incontinence are a different product from the transvaginal mesh used in prolapse repair that was ordered off the US market in 2019. Both involve mesh, and the distinction gets lost constantly. Ask your surgeon directly what material is being used and why.

When to Seek Professional Help

You don't need to wait until leaking is severe before talking to someone. Most women hold off for years, partly out of embarrassment and partly because they've already decided nothing can be done. Both of those cost time rather than saving it.

Worth making an appointment

  • Leaking regularly, whatever the amount
  • Leaking that has changed how you exercise, or what you say yes to socially
  • Avoiding activities because of what might happen
  • Waking several times a night to go
  • Not knowing which type of incontinence you have, and wanting to find out before spending money on anything

Worth seeing someone promptly

  • Blood in your urine
  • Pain or burning when you urinate
  • Pelvic pain
  • Difficulty starting urination, or trouble emptying completely
  • A sudden change in bladder control rather than a gradual one

Incontinence is common. That does not mean every new bladder symptom should be filed under normal aging, so treat all items in the second list as urgent, and visit your health care professional as soon as possand the second list is where that assumption causes real problems.

Frequently Asked Incontinence Questions:

YoniFlex has been supporting women’s pelvic floor health for over six years, and we have received hundreds of questions from people just like you. Here are answers to the most common questions about incontinence we receive:

Is leaking just a normal part of getting older?

No. It becomes more common with age, which is a different thing.

What accumulates over the years are the contributors: pregnancies, births, menopause, decades of lifting, changes in the tissue. Age is what those happen alongside, not the thing causing the leaking.

The distinction matters because "it's just my age" is usually where a woman stops looking for help. Plenty of women in their seventies have no bladder symptoms at all, and plenty in their thirties do.

Common is not the same as normal, and neither of them means untreatable.


Will it get worse if I leave it alone?

Not inevitably. But leaving it alone isn't quite a neutral choice either.

Incontinence doesn't progress on a timetable. Plenty of women leak about the same amount at sixty as they did at forty-five. What tends to make it worse isn't time passing, it's the contributors continuing unchecked: the straining, the chronic cough, the lifting without thinking about technique, a pelvic floor that keeps getting weaker because nothing is asking it to work.

Menopause is the one stretch where many women notice a clear step up, because falling estrogen affects the tissue around the bladder and urethra directly.

So the honest answer is that you have more say in the direction than it probably feels like you do. Most of what makes incontinence worse can be changed. Very little of it is just time.

Can childbirth cause incontinence, and how long should I wait before worrying?

Yes. Pregnancy and vaginal birth are the largest contributors for most women, and leaking in the first weeks after a baby is common enough to be close to expected.

Worth knowing that the pregnancy itself does part of this, not only the delivery. Nine months of increasing weight pressing down on the pelvic floor has an effect regardless of how the baby arrives, which is why a cesarean lowers the risk rather than removing it.

On timing, a lot of early postpartum leaking settles on its own as the tissue recovers, and most of that improvement happens within the first few months.

Three months is the usual marker. If you're still leaking at three months postpartum, that's the point to get assessed rather than keep waiting it out. Waiting longer doesn't improve the odds, and postpartum is one of the few situations where starting pelvic floor work early genuinely changes the outcome.

Can menopause / perimenopause cause bladder leakage?

Yes, and for many women it's the point where symptoms they'd been quietly managing become harder to ignore.

The mechanism is estrogen. The vagina, the urethra and the bladder neck all carry estrogen receptors, so they all respond when levels fall. The tissue thins, loses some elasticity, and the urethra closes less firmly than it used to against the same pressure.

This sits inside a wider set of changes with a name worth knowing: genitourinary syndrome of menopause, or GSM. It also covers dryness, irritation and discomfort during sex. The name is useful because it tells your doctor you're describing a recognized condition rather than a list of unrelated complaints.

Low-dose vaginal estrogen improves the tissue directly and is worth asking about. It won't strengthen muscle, so it isn't a substitute for the exercise work. The two address different parts of the same problem.

Can constipation really make this worse?

More than most women expect, and it's the contributor people are most likely to wave away.

Two separate things are happening. A loaded bowel sits directly against the bladder and takes up space, which reduces how much the bladder can hold and brings urgency on sooner. That part reverses as soon as the constipation does.

The second part is slower and matters more. Straining on the toilet puts heavy downward force through the pelvic floor, and doing it repeatedly over years stretches both those muscles and the nerves running through them. It's the same mechanical load as heavy lifting, applied several times a week for decades, by someone who would never describe it as lifting.

This is one of the better things on the list to act on, because it's entirely fixable and the slow damage stops the day the straining does.

Are kegels good for everyone?

No, and this is the exception worth taking seriously.

A pelvic floor can be too tight as easily as it can be too weak, and a tight one doesn't need strengthening. It needs to learn to release. Strengthening a pelvic floor that already can't relax makes things worse rather than better.

The signals are pelvic pain, pain during sex, difficulty getting urination started, and constipation that doesn't respond to the usual approaches. If any of those are part of your picture, get assessed before starting any strengthening program, including one with a device.

There's a second exception. If your leaking is urge rather than stress, kegels aren't addressing what's driving it. They may help a little, but bladder training is where your effort is better spent.

And a third, which almost nobody checks: kegels only work if you're doing them correctly. Done with a bearing-down motion instead of a lift, they push in exactly the wrong direction.



I've been doing kegels for years and nothing has changed. What now?

Then something in the setup is wrong, and more of the same won't fix it. The most common explanation by a distance is technique. A pelvic floor contraction is invisible, nobody has ever confirmed yours, and a large share of women who believe they are doing kegels correctly are not. After that come three others. Kegels address stress incontinence, so if your leaking is urge-driven you have been training a muscle that was never the problem. A pelvic floor that is tight rather than weak gets tighter with strengthening, which usually shows up as pelvic pain or difficulty getting urination started. And occasionally something else is behind it, such as a medication or a bladder that isn't emptying properly.

The way to find out which one applies is an assessment rather than another year of exercises, and a single appointment with a pelvic floor physical therapist answers the first three. If it turns out to be technique, that's the one you can solve at home, and it's the problem YoniFlex was built for.

Should I drink less water if I leak?

No, and it's the most common thing women try on their own. The logic seems sound, less in means less to leak out, but in practice it backfires. Concentrated urine irritates the bladder lining, which makes urgency worse rather than better, so you end up going just as often and with less warning. Cutting fluids also makes constipation more likely, and constipation puts its own pressure on the pelvic floor, so one change works against you in two directions at once.

Drink normally. If waking at night is your particular problem, adjust the timing rather than the total, so ease off in the two or three hours before bed and make it up earlier in the day. Caffeine is worth testing separately, since it irritates the bladder in a lot of women. And if you're unsure how much fluid is right for you, that's a question for your doctor rather than something to settle by guessing downward.

Can I still run and exercise?

Yes, and the advice to stop is handed out far too readily. Giving up running or lifting costs you strength, bone density and the general fitness that supports the pelvic floor in the first place, in exchange for avoiding a symptom rather than treating it. What usually needs to change is how you do things rather than whether you do them. Breathe out on the effort instead of holding your breath and bearing down, build strength through your hips and trunk so they absorb load the pelvic floor would otherwise take, and be deliberate about very heavy or overhead lifting.

High-impact work is the honest exception. Running and jumping set symptoms off in some women more than anything else does, and if that's you, it's information rather than a verdict. Some women use an incontinence pessary for workouts and nothing else. Some find emptying beforehand is enough. And leaking that happens only during exercise is textbook stress incontinence, which is the type most likely to respond to muscle work, so it also has the clearest path out. If impact is consistently a problem, a pelvic floor physical therapist can work out why.

Do pads and liners make it worse over time?

Not physically. A pad doesn't weaken anything or make leaking more likely. Two practical notes, though. Menstrual pads aren't designed for urine and don't hold or neutralize it the same way, so a product made for incontinence works better and smells less. And whatever you use, change it often, because skin sitting in moisture gets irritated, and irritated skin is more prone to infection.

The real cost of pads is a different one. They work well enough that a lot of women stop there, and twenty years of pads is both expensive and a long time to manage something that might have improved with three months of the right work. There's nothing wrong with using them while you sort out what's underneath. The trap is letting them quietly become the whole plan.

Does incontinence affect sex?

For some women, yes, and it's the part almost nobody brings up. Leaking during sex has a name, coital incontinence, which tells you it's common enough to need one. It tends to happen at one of two moments: at penetration, which usually goes with stress incontinence and the same loss of urethral support, or at orgasm, which is more often linked to the bladder muscle contracting when it shouldn't. Knowing which one is yours is useful, because they respond to different things.

The practical side is simpler than the worry. Emptying beforehand removes most of it. Positions vary in how much pressure they put on the bladder, so some will be more comfortable than others. A towel takes the anxiety out of it entirely, and the anxiety is usually doing more harm to your sex life than the leaking is. Pelvic floor work helps here the same way it helps elsewhere. And if dryness is part of the picture, which is very common after menopause, that's a separate thing and an easily treatable one.

What actually happens at a pelvic floor assessment?

Less than most women imagine, and knowing what's involved is usually enough to get the appointment booked. The first visit is mostly conversation: your symptoms, your births, any surgeries, what medications you take, and when the leaking happens. If you've kept a bladder diary, bring it, because it answers half the questions before they're asked. Then they look at how you move and breathe, since posture and breathing pattern affect the pelvic floor more than most people expect.

The internal exam is the part women dread, and it's gentler than the picture in their heads. There's no speculum and no stirrups. It's one gloved finger, used to feel whether the muscles contract, how strongly, whether they release afterward, and whether both sides are working evenly. That last piece is information you can't get any other way, and it's the whole reason the appointment is worth going to. You'll be talked through each step as it happens, you can decline the internal exam and still get plenty from the visit, and first appointments usually run forty-five minutes to an hour.


Can incontinence be improved without surgery?

For most women, yes. Conservative treatment is the first line everywhere for a reason: it works often enough that surgery is held back for the cases where it doesn't. Pelvic floor muscle training, bladder training, the everyday changes, a pessary, medication for urge, and at-home stimulation all sit ahead of any procedure, and most women who work through them in the right order for their type see real improvement.

Two words are worth separating though. Improved and cured are not the same thing. Plenty of women go from leaking several times a week to leaking occasionally under real provocation, and that is a genuine result even though it isn't zero. Some do get completely dry. Which one you land on depends mostly on your type and how long it has been going on, and the honest answer is that nobody can tell you in advance which it will be.


Does insurance cover pelvic floor physical therapy?

Often, but it varies enough that you have to check rather than assume. In the US it's usually billed as outpatient physical therapy, which most plans cover to some degree. What differs is whether you need a referral first, how much of your deductible is left, whether the practice is in network, and how many visits your plan allows in a year. Some pelvic floor practices don't bill insurance at all and work cash-pay, which is worth finding out before you book rather than after.

Ask your insurer three specific things: is outpatient physical therapy covered, do I need a referral, and how many visits per year. Then ask the clinic separately whether they're in network and what they charge if they aren't. If you have an HSA or FSA, this is an eligible expense either way. And if cost is the barrier, a single assessment appointment is worth a great deal more than nothing. Many therapists will assess you, set you up with a program and send you off rather than insisting on a full course.

Can YoniFlex help with my incontinence?

It depends on what's causing your leaking, and that's a real answer rather than a hedge. YoniFlex is cleared by the FDA for stress incontinence and urge incontinence. If your leaking is pressure-triggered and comes from a weak pelvic floor, the probe contracts the muscle for you, so you get the training effect without having to find the muscle yourself. If it's urge-driven, the pads work on the nerve signaling instead, though bladder training is still the first thing to try and the device works alongside it rather than in place of it.

Where it won't help deserves to be just as clear. If your pelvic floor is tight rather than weak, which usually comes with pelvic pain, stimulation is the wrong direction entirely. If your bladder isn't emptying properly, or the leaking is new and unexplained, that needs looking at before you buy anything. And YoniFlex can't tell you which type you have. It's a treatment, not a diagnosis, so if you don't know what you're dealing with, that's the part to sort out first.

Is YoniFlex the same as doing kegels?

Not the same, but aimed at the same thing. A kegel is a contraction you produce yourself, which means it depends entirely on finding the right muscle and contracting it properly. YoniFlex produces the contraction electrically, so the muscle fires whether or not you could have located it yourself, and it fires the same way in every session.

The research puts electrical stimulation and correctly performed pelvic floor training in roughly the same place, so this isn't a claim that one is stronger than the other. The difference is certainty. A correct kegel and a YoniFlex contraction do similar work, but only one of them depends on you getting the technique right, and a large share of women don't. You can also do both. Plenty of women use the device to learn what a proper contraction actually feels like, then do them unaided as well.

How long before I notice a difference?

The same timeline as any muscle work, because that's what it is. Most women using it consistently notice the first changes somewhere around six to eight weeks, and meaningful change closer to three months. The research trials on pelvic floor training ran four to six months before measuring, which is a fair guide to how long this actually takes.

Be specific with yourself about what a difference looks like, because it's rarely the leaking stopping outright. More often it takes more to set it off than it used to. A sneeze that would have caught you in week one doesn't in week ten. You make it to the bathroom where before you didn't. Those are the changes to watch for, and they're easy to miss if you're only looking for zero. Consistency matters more than session length, and the women who get the least out of it are usually the ones who used it hard for two weeks and then stopped.

What is YoniFlex?

If you've never come across it, here's the plain version.

YoniFlex is an FDA approved11 pelvic floor trainer you use at home. What arrives is a small handheld control unit with a color screen, built in batteries, and a probe that connects to it by a thin cable. The probe goes in much like a tampon.

What it does is electrical muscle stimulation, usually shortened to EMS. It's the same technology a physiotherapy clinic uses, in a unit you own rather than one you book time on. A gentle electrical current tells your pelvic floor muscles to contract, then lets them release, then does it again. You aren't doing the contracting. The device is, and that is the entire point of it.

A session looks like this. Connect the probe, add a little lubricant, insert it, choose a program, and turn the strength up until you can comfortably feel it working. Then sit down for about twenty minutes while it does the rest. Read, watch something, close your eyes. Depending on which program you're running, you'll get up to 120 contractions in that time, each one held and released at the right pace, and every one of them in the right muscle.

There are nine programs on YoniFlex, because different problems need different work. We have a program designed specifically for both stress incontinence, and urge incontinence. Some programs run at a slower frequency to build endurance in the muscles that hold you up all day. Others run faster, training the quick reflex that catches a leak when you cough or sneeze. Included with your YoniFlex is a quick start guide showing you all of the programs and what they are designed to support. YoniFlex is cleared by the FDA for stress incontinence and urge incontinence7.

Additional Incontinence Resources

You have made it all the way down to the bottom of the page.  I'm proud of you that was a lot of reading!

We can't leave you without first discussing a few highly recommended online resources to help you on your journey.

Bladder Control Problems, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
The US government's plain-language overview of urinary incontinence. Free, thorough and not selling anything.
niddk.nih.gov

Treatments for Bladder Control Problems, NIDDK
A fuller breakdown of the treatment options than we have room for here, including the medical ones.
niddk.nih.gov

Bladder Control for Women, NIDDK patient booklet
A printable PDF, useful if you want something to read away from a screen or to take to an appointment.
niddk.nih.gov

PT Locator, Academy of Pelvic Health Physical Therapy
Search for a pelvic floor physical therapist near you. This is the one to use if you take away one thing from this page
aptapelvichealth.org/ptlocator

Reach out and Chat

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to us. We can be reached at Support@YoniFlex.com, or by filling out our online form.  


Until next time,

Rae,
President,
YoniFlex.com

WHEN YOU'RE READY

Strengthening is the part you can start on your own

A holistic approach includes strenghening your pelvic floor muscles.  That is what YoniFlex does for you.

See the YoniFlex Trainer

References

1. Hendrix SL et al. Pelvic organ prolapse in the Women's Health Initiative: gravity and gravidity. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2002. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12066091
Nygaard I et al. Prevalence of symptomatic pelvic floor disorders in US women. JAMA, 2008. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18799443

2. Staging follows the POP-Q system (Pelvic Organ Prolapse Quantification), the standard used in gynecologic practice. Mayo Clinic, Pelvic organ prolapse: diagnosis and treatment. mayoclinic.org

3. Hagen S et al. Individualised pelvic floor muscle training in women with pelvic organ prolapse (POPPY): a multicentre randomised controlled trial. The Lancet, 2014. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24290404

Hagen S, Stark D. Conservative prevention and management of pelvic organ prolapse in women. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. cochrane.org plain language summary  

4. Bump RC et al. Assessment of Kegel pelvic muscle exercise performance after brief verbal instruction. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1991. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1872333 

5. Bump RC et al. Assessment of Kegel pelvic muscle exercise performance after brief verbal instruction. American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1991. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1872333

6. Stewart F et al. Electrical stimulation with non-implanted devices for stress urinary incontinence in women. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2017. cochranelibrary.com

Electrical Muscle Stimulation for the Conservative Management of Female Pelvic Floor Muscle Dysfunction: A Scoping Review. Clinical and Experimental Obstetrics and Gynecology, 2024. imrpress.com

7. The 2020 genitourinary syndrome of menopause position statement of The North American Menopause Society. Menopause, 2020. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32852449

8.  Long-term outcome after routine surgery for pelvic organ prolapse: a national register-based cohort study. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9270303

After your operation for prolapse and incontinence. Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust patient information. nnuh.nhs.uk

9. US Food and Drug Administration. Pelvic Organ Prolapse (POP): Surgical Mesh Considerations and Recommendations. fda.gov

US Food and Drug Administration. Urogynecologic Surgical Mesh Implants. fda.gov

10. Mayo Clinic, Pelvic organ prolapse: symptoms and causes, including the "When to see a doctor" section. mayoclinic.org 

11. US Food and Drug Administration, 510(k) Premarket Notification database, clearance number. accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfpmn/pmn.cfm