Gemma Collins reveals how she has solved the all-too-common problem of ... trends now

Sitting in her manager's office in central London last September, Gemma Collins was seized by a coughing fit. 

The media personality — best known for a string of reality TV show appearances, starting with The Only Way Is Essex and Dancing On Ice — tried to concentrate on the matter in hand, but her mind was elsewhere.

'I'd had a cough and a cold for some time,' she explains, and she feared the consequences. Sure enough, the intense coughing fit caused an embarrassing leak.

'It was as if the floodgates had opened,' she says frankly.

It wasn't the first time this had happened. A few weeks earlier she was at home when she experienced her first bladder leak after an intense bout of coughing.

'Suddenly, it was like my waters had broken; perhaps I was having a baby . . .' she jokes now. But at the time it wasn't funny.

'It made me feel dirty. I'm a very hygienic person anyway, but no adult likes wetting themselves.'

A couple of weeks after that first episode, she was jumping up and down on a trampoline with her two nephews 'laughing like mad', and the same thing happened.

Soon after came that business meeting in London, the first time a leak had happened in public.

'I was uncomfortable, both physically but also emotionally,' she says.

'I was embarrassed and fearful that what was happening would be plain for everyone to see.'

The problem didn't go away. 'In the end, I woke up one day and made up my mind that this had to stop. I went into my local pharmacy to see what products were on offer. Now, here I am, aged 42, happily wearing a pad to absorb any leaks.'

Urinary incontinence is common, affecting an estimated seven million women in the UK, although accurate statistics are hard to come by because so many women are hesitant about talking about their problem.

It can occur at any time, although it becomes more common with age.

'What Gemma experiences is something called stress incontinence, triggered by a weakening of the pelvic floor beneath her bladder, bowels and womb which causes urine to leak out,' explains Myra Robson, a pelvic health physiotherapist at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust in South London.

This typically occurs as a result of childbirth. The weight of carrying a baby weakens the pelvic floor, the hammock-like band of muscle that runs from the pelvic bone at the front to the tail bone at the back and which helps keep the entrance to the bladder firmly shut. When under pressure — for example, during a coughing fit — urine can leak.

Yet while it's a common problem for mothers, it can also affect those like Gemma who haven't had children.

Chronic constipation, severe coughing, a significant increase in weight over a sustained period, and lifting heavy weights in the gym, can also trigger it, explains Myra Robson.

These all cause pressure in the abdomen, in turn putting pressure on the bladder and, 'unless the pelvic floor is giving the requisite support', it can lead to leaks, adds Gill Davey, a continence nurse for Bladder Health UK.

'Gemma's experience is very usual,' she says. 'The problem can be exacerbated with age and particularly after the menopause when the body is no longer naturally producing the oestrogen that helps strengthen the pelvic floor, which is wrapped around the urethra [the tube that exits the bladder] and has an opening and closing mechanism known as the sphincter.

'When the plumpness of the pelvic floor is weakened from lack of oestrogen, it [the sphincter] won't always close efficiently.'

The cause in Gemma's case is not clear.

In 2015, then aged 34, she underwent a well-publicised non-surgical procedure to rejuvenate her labia — 'a designer vagina' — but she's been assured that, as a cosmetic treatment, it had no effect on her pelvic floor. Whatever the cause, she's been very open about her problem.

If you should detect a missionary zeal in Gemma's message, you wouldn't be far wrong.

'Up to one in five women suffer from bladder leaks,' she says, 'but far too many of them don't seek help. It's a taboo subject.'

Indeed research shows that it takes, on average, six years for a woman with stress incontinence

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