After her first child was born in 1999, Missy Lavender had a rude awakening – she realized she could no longer laugh, sneeze or lift her baby without leaking urine.
Her problem: stress urinary incontinence or SUI, a common affliction that affects millions of women.
The typical patient with SUI develops the condition after childbirth, when the stresses of pregnancy and delivery weaken the pelvic floor muscles and the urethral sphincter, a muscle that works as an on-off switch for bladder control. A New England Journal of Medicine study (2003) found that 21 percent of women who deliver a baby vaginally have some degree of incontinence.
When Lavender consulted her doctor she was told to Kegel (perform pelvic floor muscle exercises) and come back in six months. When that failed to solve her problem, she sought expert care, eventually had surgery, but was still dissatisfied with the availability of information and practical, holistic solutions available in the market. Shortly thereafter, Lavender put her Northwestern University MBA to use: she began the Women’s Health Foundation (WHF), a demure title that reflects the public’s reluctance to deal directly with issues of incontinence.
“For many women there is such a stigma attached to this disorder,” Lavender explains. “We are all potty trained as toddlers and the assumption is you then control your own elimination. To have to admit that you can’t is like admitting you are infantile or senile. For those of us who are neither, it’s embarrassing.”
Lavender was determined to get the shame out of finding treatment, to increase public awareness of just how prevalent the problem is and to bring an openness and sense of humor to the process. She founded the organization in 2004. One of the organization’s principle efforts has been to develop and teach a wellness-based program called Total Control®, a seven-week class designed to educate participants about pelvic health and exercise. The Foundation offers training and licensing of instructors, who then lead classes through hospitals, fitness centers, YMCAs and other community centers.
Initial studies show that women who take the seven week class show a 40 percent reduction in discomfort and a significant decrease in urge and stress incontinence. One fourth of the women with SUI and one fifth of the women with urgency stated they were symptom free. As a bonus, women also report that their abdominal muscles are tighter, they sleep better in the night and they are experiencing better orgasms during intercourse.
In 2007, Women’s Health Foundation published “You Go Girl…But Only When You Want To!” an instructional handbook and released a pelvic fitness workout DVD “Total Control®: Be Fit, Be Sexy, Be In Control”. Both educational tools are focused on presenting wellness tips and topics to help treat and prevent incontinence.
“What we need are more `pelvic floor champions,’” declares Lavender. The key to bladder control, she says, is strengthening the three key muscle groups that collectively are called the “Pelvic Pyramid.” Those three include the pelvic floor muscles, the deep abdominals, technically known as the transverses abdominus, as well as the deep back muscles, known as the multifidi, which are positioned along the spine.
Women who have trained and strengthened their Pelvic Pyramid muscles through the Total Control® training program learn to “squeeze before they sneeze” which can keep those annoying little leaks at bay. But there is more to bladder control than just exercising.
Basic education can help, too. Total Control® students learn that certain foods or beverages can trigger an episode, or keep it away. They learn the role of constipation in the equation and how changing their bathroom habits will help, too.
Lavender admits that raising public awareness is an uphill struggle. “There are just so many people who don’t want to talk about it,” she says. “But I know from the responses we have gotten thus far this is an important mission. Women have told us that Total Control® has effectively given them their lives back. Now we just have to take the message to the remaining millions of women who can benefit!”
For more information on Women’s Health Foundation go to www.womenshealthfoundation.org. To learn more about Total Control®, visit the website at www.totalcontrolprogram.com.
