About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Lifestyle and home remedies
By Mayo Clinic staffKegel exercises, designed to strengthen your pelvic floor muscles, can help both prevent and treat stress incontinence. To perform Kegel exercises, follow these steps:
- Pull in your pelvic floor muscles — the muscles you use to stop urinating.
- Hold them for a count of three and then relax for a count of three.
- Work up to 10 to 15 repetitions at a time.
- Repeat three times daily.
Kegel exercises may be most successful when they're taught by a therapist using biofeedback. Biofeedback uses information from a variety of pain-free monitoring devices to help teach you to control certain involuntary body responses, such as muscle tension. In this case, biofeedback can help ensure you're contracting the proper muscles, and that the intensity and duration of the muscle contractions are optimal.
- Lentz GM. Anatomic Ddefects of the abdominal wall and pelvic floor. In: Katz VL, et al., eds. Comprehensive Gynecology. 5th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Mosby; 2007. http://www.mdconsult.com/das/book/body/172806660-4/0/1524/131.html?tocnode=53759383&fromURL=131.html#4-u1.0-B978-0-323-02951-3..50023-6_663. Accessed Nov. 24, 2009.
- Abed M, et al. Urinary incontinence and pelvic organ prolapse: Diagnosis and treatment for the primary care physician. The Medical Clinics of North America. 2008;92:1273.
- Mahajan ST. Anterior vaginal wall support abnormalities: Evaluation and treatment. http://www.uptodate.com/home/index.html. Accessed Nov. 24, 2009.
- Urinary incontinence in women. National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse. http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/uiwomen/. Accessed Nov. 24, 2009.
- Gebhart JB (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Dec. 6, 2009.
- Gallenberg MM (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Nov. 30, 2009.
Find Mayo Clinic on