It would seem that drinking a small glass of tap water before bedtime would be an innocuous enough activity. However, that that small amount liquid you swallow could cause you to feel an almost violent need to pass urine before you before you manage to crawl between the sheets. You might think there is something wrong with the water coming out of your faucet, but the real reason you would be seized by an unmanageable urge to pass urine is because you suffer from urge incontinence, a condition caused by your bladder contracting and squeezing out urine in an involuntary manner. This condition, which also goes by such other names such as hyperactive bladder or irritable bladder, is identifiable by the undeniable need to bolt to the bathroom in order to pee. This need or urge can occur as frequently as twice a night or as often as eight or ten times over the course of a day. Going to the bathroom to urinate that many times a day is by anyone’s estimation a lot of life spent in the bathroom.
Technically speaking, the cause of all this frantic urination is the inappropriate contracting of the detrusor muscle enveloping the bladder. When this muscle inadvertently contracts at eh time the bladder is filling with fluid, the natural urge to void urine is short circuited, so to speak, and your ability to suppress the need to pee is overtaken by the physical urgency caused by the contraction. In the end, you lose the ability to decide when you go to the bathroom and begin to fall victim to physical forces outside your control. This loss of control over your bodily functions such as peeing can be very distressing and can result in feelings of guilt and shame. In addition, the continuous and sudden exits from social and business interactions in order to follow the unreasonable demands of your bladder can result in embarrassment.
Urge Incontinence As Condition
If you suffer from this condition, here are a few general treatment suggestions; of course, you should always consult with your doctor whenever you attempt to treat any serious issues concerning your bladder.
In some cases behavioral treatment will relieve some symptoms of an overactive or irritable bladder can help reduce the sudden trips to the bathroom. Bladder training is one kind of behavioral treatment and it involves keeping to a fixed schedule that invokes assigned, timed voiding of urine. As time goes on and some success is achieved by the sufferer, the time periods between bathroom trips could be extended from fifteen to twenty minutes to four to five hours in duration. The important element of this approach to relief is to keep a written record of your progress at extending the time between the necessary trips to void your bladder of urine.
Urge Incontinence Suppression
Another approach to bladder control is to learn how to suppress the urge to run to the bathroom to relieve your immediate need to pee. The idea behind urge suppression is to force yourself to not respond instantly to the frantic messages from your body that you must use the bathroom. It is possible that over time and with enough concentration to actually increase the control you have over how much time passes between the initial urge and the actual urination.
Ultimately, it is important to know that urge incontinence is a condition for which remedies and treatments are available. Ultimately, it may be necessary to access certain medications to achieve relief, and it may be appropriate to combine medications with behavioral applications to affect the desired result, which is more control over the urge to suddenly rush to the nearest bathroom and void your bladder.
Great post! Why is this information not shared with women BEFORE they have babies? I may have thought twice about it had I known then what I know now! Ok – no I wouldn’t. However, the fact is – even with all of those ideas for ‘fixing’ the issue – there is 1 that can’t be fixed.
For instance, for myself, my children (2 years apart) both got stuck in my pelvis – so the forceps were used to get them out. Unfortunately, the ’specialist’ who delivered them butchered me. So, 6 episiotomies (4 corrective surgeries) later, according to my latest OBGYN (who performed this last corrective surgery) – I now have no pelvic floor left.
I won’t go into details about what each surgery involved – and what each specialist said about the 1st one who’d butchered me – but suffice it to say, my birth stories are the the ones that everyone crosses their legs in sympathy for.
I wouldn’t change a thing – I love my children (10 and 8 yrs) and they are worth every bit of what I’ve gone through. What’s amazing is, I’ve now suffered from incontinence for years – and only just realized recently that I was incontinent. I suffer from the stress incontinence – the sneezing, laughing, coughing one. It’s so much easier to deal with now that I know what it is.