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Pelvic Floor Yoga Not Superior for Women With Urinary Incontinence

Medically reviewed by Carmen Pope, BPharm. Last updated on Aug 27, 2024.

By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Aug. 26, 2024 -- A 12-week pelvic floor yoga program is not superior to a physical conditioning program for women with daily urinary incontinence, according to a study published online Aug. 27 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Alison J. Huang, M.D., from the University of California San Francisco, and colleagues examined the effects of a therapeutic pelvic floor yoga program versus a nonspecific physical conditioning program on UI among ambulatory women aged 45 years or older in a study conducted at three sites in California. The intervention consisted of a 12-week program of pelvic floor-specific Hatha yoga techniques (pelvic yoga) versus equivalent-time instruction and practice of general muscle stretching and strengthening (physical conditioning).

Of the 240 women reporting daily urgency-, stress-, or mixed type-UI, the mean baseline UI frequency was 3.4 episodes per day, including 1.9 and 1.4 urgency-type and stress-type episodes, respectively, per day. The researchers found that total UI frequency decreased by an average of 2.3 and 1.9 episodes per day during a 12-week time period with pelvic yoga and physical conditioning, respectively. There was a per-day decrease of 1.2 and 1.0 episodes of urgency-type UI in the pelvic yoga and physical conditioning groups, respectively. No difference was seen in the reductions in stress-type UI frequency between the groups.

"As a pleiotropic behavioral intervention, yoga may offer greater therapeutic benefit for urgency UI as an inherently more complex syndrome," the authors write. "However, changes in type-specific UI were secondary outcomes only and require more investigation."

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Disclaimer: Statistical data in medical articles provide general trends and do not pertain to individuals. Individual factors can vary greatly. Always seek personalized medical advice for individual healthcare decisions.

© 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Posted August 2024

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