Smoking can damage the pelvic floor and keep the tissues of the vagina less healthy.
Quitting smoking can improve this long term negative effect of smoking on your muscle and ligament strengths. The strategies for healing, including pelvic floor therapy can begin to repair damage; but likely your smoking has changed your tissues in ways that need medical treatmetn correction. We recommend smokers who are noticing weak pelvic floor or bladders come in to be evaluated and to consider their alternatives. One newer therapy, that appears safe, is FDA cleared, and offered affordably at Women’s Health Practice, is the non-invasive treatment of MonaLisa Touch to repair the vaginal tissue damage that smoking has caused.
Since smoking can cause urinary leakage by stripping the tissue of it’s needed oxygen, and promoting chronic coughing and stress hormones that weaken the pelvic floor it’s time to let your gyno help you stop smoking, in addition to treating the pelvic floor problems.
If you cannot quit smoking, and you additionally have need for weight reduction, sometimes medication can be part of the solution.
Oddly we even see decreased smoking when we put you on a diet with the weight loss medication Contrave, so selecting the right medications for the job can have many favorable effects as well as the favorable effects we intended.
First we may want you to help us determine the cause of the bladder problems leading to pad usage, by tracking symptoms, and we can help you do that. But bottom line, if you didn’t realize why you are having increasing problem with over active bladder, urge incontinence or mixed incontinence disorders, it’s tough to correct.
If you smoke and do not yet have issues, you are in luck to help prevent the consequences of long term smoking if you are able to quit now.
Tobacco cigarette side products and nicotine lower estrogen, which may also have the long term consequences of weakening your pelvic floor. If you have low estrogen your tissues may have weakened and a non-invasive, non-systemic way to correct this this is what the procedures MonaLisa Touch and ThermiVa are designed to do.
eCigs probably won’t help you solve this problem, less nicotine over all improves your bladder, you really should quit! There probably is also a direct link with nicotine and contractions of the bladder wall called detrusor contractions. The detrusor muscle of the bladder wall has to function well to actually urinate, however uncoordinated contractions can be a problem.
Studies also reveal that more urinary retention occurs in smokers, and it can be a source of infections and lower abdominal discomfort. There are tests to help your gyno determine what you need Cystometrics, or simple bladder testing www.womenshealthpractice.com can help you make a diagnosis.
And some of these changes may be reversed if you decrease or quit. On the other hand, damage to the actual muscles leading to pelvic floor anatomy problems, could be permanent. Yet there are so many solutions to not have to have a surgery or chronic therapy, one is to get the urgent PC overactive bladder treatment first, or in combination with MonaLisa Touch or Radiofrequency treatments, ThermiVa.
If you can’t stop, at least get your daughters to learn the dangers of smoking! Wet pants, ok if you just popped out of the pool, otherwise, not good for us! Discuss with your gyno today!
