There are treatments for incontinence.  They include behavioral, medical, and surgical interventions.

Because incontinence is a symptom rather than a disorder, treatment naturally depends on the type, cause, and severity of the situation. Of course, various treatment approaches can be combined.

The most commonly prescribed behavioral treatment is the one discussed in this episode of Second Opinion: Kegel exercises .  They consist of alternately squeezing and relaxing the pelvic floor muscles to strengthen them.  Strengthening those muscles can reduce or cure both urge and stress incontinence.  

However, for these exercises to be effective, you must work the correct muscles, in the correct way. In fact, doing them incorrectly can be harmful.  The National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse offers detailed instructions, with diagrams.  But written and verbal instructions are not always enough; the best way to learn to do them correctly is to have your doctor show you. This should be done during a physical exam, when your doctor can give you direct feedback about whether you're exercising the right muscles.  Your doctor can also use biofeedback techniques.

In addition to doing Kegels, you might also be asked to do some "bladder retraining," which means becoming aware of your urinary habits and gradually increasing the time between urinating, or urinating at specific intervals or times of day.  As with any form of behavioral therapy, both Kegels and bladder retraining require your full participation.  In other words, if you do not do them, they cannot work.  Doing them may seem inconvenient, or annoying, or unpleasant.  But remaining incontinent is worse.

There are many behavioral therapies that may be an option-you should talk to your doctor about all of your treatment options.

A non-behavioral form of physical therapy involves applying mild electrical pulses to the nerves that control the bladder and sphincter muscles. Known as "neuromodulation" or "Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation" (TENS), this treatment can reduce both stress and urge incontinence.  Normally it is done in a doctor's office.  But there is a new version of this treatment that uses a "sacral nerve stimulator," a sort of pacemaker for the bladder. Like a pacemaker, it is implanted under the skin during a minor surgical procedure.

Another approach is to inject a bulking agent into the tissues around the urethra. The added bulk expands these tissues so they press on the urethra and help close it, which reduces stress incontinence. Collagen, mentioned in this episode of Second Opinion, is a bulking agent.

There are also a number of medical devices that can treat incontinence in women, such as a pessary (a stiff ring you insert in your vagina that supports the bladder and helps reduce stress incontinence) and urethral inserts (tiny devices inserted into the urethra to stop urine leakage during specific activities that cause you to leak or lose urinary control).

But the fact is, we often want to reject any form of treatment other than "a pill," because taking a pill seems like the easiest, quickest answer.  However, medication may not be appropriate for your specific problem, and virtually all drugs have some side effects. 

Nevertheless, there are a number of medicines that can treat certain types of incontinence, and your doctor may prescribe one or more.  Some are bladder relaxants, drugs that relax the muscles in the bladder and prevent bladder spasms, which helps the bladder empty completely during urination.  Others stop muscular contractions in an overactive bladder, or tighten bladder and urethra muscles to prevent leaking.  Of course, if your incontinence is caused by a specific disease or disorder, the drugs that treat it should stop the incontinence.

Finally, there are surgical interventions to treat incontinence. These include surgeries to implant an artificial sphincter to control urination, to implant a sacral nerve stimulator, as described above, to correct an enlarged prostate in men, and to correct a prolapsed bladder in women.