Louise Gleason, PT, Physical Therapist with the Center for Women and Infants at South Miami Hospital, explains the bladder wall muscles are relaxed and they accommodate more and more urine. At some point, your brain and the reflexes that control the bladder signal your body that it is time to go to the bathroom.

She says when that happens the walls of the bladder contract and it squeezes the urine out through the urethra. She explains two types of incontinence: stress incontinence, which is when there is a leakage in the muscles that keep the urethra closed; and urgency incontinence, which is when the brain sends the signal to the bladder wall to start contracting prematurely.