Pee When You Sneeze? There's a Quick Fix You May Not Know About

Plenty of women are faithfully doing their Kegels—and still peeing a little bit every time they sneeze, or run, or any number of other everyday occurrences. In a first-person piece for the Guardian, writer Gail Cornwall describes years of stress urinary incontinence (SUI) that left her planning runs around bathrooms, wearing black leggings to hide wet patches, and assuming the aforementioned Kegels were her only option. She never raised the issue with a doctor, and no doctor asked. That silent suffering is widespread: research suggests nearly half of women experience SUI weekly, yet for every case reported to a primary-care doctor, as many as 20 go unmentioned.

When Cornwall finally sought help at the University of California, San Francisco's Women's Center for Bladder and Pelvic Health, she was offered four options: pelvic floor muscle training (basically advanced Kegels); a disposable device that props up the urethra; a surgical "sling" that supports it long-term; and urethral "bulking" injections—fillers that narrow the opening and reduce leakage. She ruled out exercises she knew she wouldn't stick with, a tampon-like device that wouldn't help for surprise sneezes, and surgery that required anesthesia and downtime from sex and workouts. She opted for the bulking agent Bulkamid, a same-day, in-office procedure done under local anesthetic.

The injections hurt—she compares them to several intense bee stings in a bikini wax zone—but were brief. The next day she ran with "not a drop." A small top-up injection weeks later sealed the deal. More than a year on, she reports seven half marathons and no leaks, along with faster times and a longer, more natural stride. The twist: her doctor later told her that her pelvic floor was already strong and "no amount of Kegels" was ever going to solve her problem.

Cornwall argues that her experience points to a broader failure in women's health. Bulking agents have existed in some form since the 1930s, and minimally invasive sling surgeries for SUI since the 1990s, yet one study suggests fewer than 15% of women bothered by SUI get injections or surgery. Many are instead told to adjust their weight, caffeine, alcohol, or water intake—advice that can sound like blame. "SUI is not part of normal aging and can be remedied," researchers have written, but Cornwall says too many women are still told, implicitly or explicitly, to just do more Kegels and live with it. See her full piece here.