Sleep, Bladder & Bowels
We see many seniors at the Salus Clinic who have had sleep, bladder and bowel problems from many years but have not sought help. We have learned so much about why sleep in the past 30 years, that we now have simple and effective solutions that can help one sleep better.
Sleep is such an integral part of our lives, that it is essential to make sure you sleep well. The absence of good quality and quantity sleep has enormous detrimental effects in both your mental and physical health. For example, it increases your risk of depression, heart attacks, and strokes. Some conditions can worsen sleep like frequent toileting or restless legs syndrome; these conditions all have potential and successful treatments. Lack of sleep markedly worsens your attention to put information into your brain and thus affects your memory as you cannot remember what you never put into your brain in the first place. Exploring solutions, it is easy to say that you just want to take a pill. However, the most beneficial solution is rarely sleeping tablets, which often worsen sleep in the long term as well as lead to a myriad of bad side effects, e.g. increasing your risk of falls. There are many features that go into whether you will sleep well, and this is what we go through in your consultations, resulting in you having practical strategies to improve your sleep.
Bladder problems can be extremely troublesome. From leaking to the constant urge to need to go to the toilet, a careful history is needed to understand why problems are present and how solutions can be found. It is important to choose treatments carefully as some of the drugs used for urinary incontinence can cause memory loss, mimicking dementia!
Similarly, bowel issues can be awful with your life dictated by proximity to a toilet, the use of pads or constant tummy pain from hard stools. Managing bowels as we get older can be tricky and no two people are the same. Often, stopping a medication that causes constipation or trying to be more physically active can help. Sometimes, additional medication is needed.
A person-centered approach to managing these problems for you can give you back a quality of life you may not have had in quite some time. An approach for one person may be very different to the next, so it is important for us to understand your problems in context to your life, so we can develop a long-term solution that will work for you.