Pelvic floor yoga not superior to general physical conditioning program for women with urinary incontinence

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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