A study published online in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology has suggested that drinking lower amounts of fluids to avoid incontinence later in life does not prevent the condition from developing.

Many of those who develop the condition, which is thought to affect around 50 million people in the developed world, use incontinence products to help them go about their daily activities as normal.

Lead researcher Fran Grodstein, an associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, examined over 65,000 health and lifestyle surveys of female nurses before reaching her conclusion.

She explained to Reuters Health that the rate of developing incontinence was the same across the study sample irrespective of how much fluid they had been taking over the past years.

According to the NHS, there are several types of urinary incontinence, but the most common are stress incontinence caused by weak pelvic floor muscles and urge incontinence, which leads to urine leaking whenever there is an intense urge to pee.