Waking up in the middle of the night to pee is common and completely normal if it's only once a night. But when your body wakes you from dream after dream to groggily walk to the bathroom, it may be a condition called nocturia.
Normally, the amount of urine your body produces decreases at night. This allows most people to sleep 6 to 8 hours without having to urinate. Some people wake up from sleep more often to urinate during the night.
Sometimes, when a person wakes up during the night they feel a need to urinate, which is referred to as nocturia. For many people, nocturia may be due to drinking too much liquid near bedtime, particularly coffee or alcohol.
Though a healthy bladder can stretch and accommodate larger volumes of urine, it's important to urinate at regular intervals. “Usually I recommend that you empty your bladder every three hours, whether you have the urge to go or not,” says Nazia Bandukwala, D.O., a urologist at Piedmont.
Producing Excess Urine at Night
This condition, called global polyuria, is most often tied to excess fluid intake, diabetes, and poor kidney function. View Source . Diuretics, including certain medications and substances like alcohol and caffeine, can cause enhanced urine production.
Limit your intake of fluids two hours before bedtime
You'll also want to limit alcohol and caffeine, which are bladder stimulants, throughout the day. If you're struggling with nighttime urination, cut back to just one alcoholic beverage, or none at all, and decrease your current caffeine intake.
Nocturnal enuresis or bedwetting is the involuntary release of urine during sleep. Bedwetting can be a symptom of bladder control problems like incontinence or overactive bladder or more severe structural issues, like an enlarged prostate or bladder cancer.
It's often recommended that you should stop drinking water two hours before going to bed. This way, you're not flooding your body with extra fluids that may cause an unwanted trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Holding your urine for extremely long periods of time can also cause urinary tract infections due to bacteria build-up. In addition, it can increase your risk of kidney disease and in rare cases even risk your bladder bursting—a condition that can be deadly.
Some water does still pass through to the bladder, slowly filling it up. This, along with the suppression of ADH as you wake up is why most people have to urinate first thing in the morning.
“It's a fact that urinary symptoms do get worse in the cold weather. As we tend to sweat less and, as a result lose less fluid through sweating, we produce more urine instead. So there will be a need to pee more.
Drinking too much fluid before bedtime or untreated diabetes are two possible causes of nocturia, the medical term for waking up at night to urinate.
Peeing more than once during the night (nocturia) can be caused by a number of factors, including bladder issues, a sleep disorder, lifestyle factors, or an underlying medical condition. Reach out to a healthcare provider for an evaluation if you're losing sleep due to nocturia.
A well-hydrated person with a close-to-full bladder will need to pee within five to fifteen minutes of drinking water. A dehydrated person with an empty bladder may take up to nine hours to pee after drinking water. There are numerous factors affecting how long it takes to pee after drinking water.
Do pelvic floor muscle exercises. Pelvic floor exercises, also known as Kegel exercises, help hold urine in the bladder. Daily exercises can strengthen these muscles, which can help keep urine from leaking when you sneeze, cough, lift, laugh, or have a sudden urge to urinate.
You can re-train your bladder to do this by following a schedule like the example below. Your healthcare provider can help you plan a schedule that is right for you. Week 1: Empty your bladder every hour during the day, even if you don't feel that you need to. Try not to go the bathroom through the night.
Nocturia can disrupt the sleep cycle, and as a result it has been linked to reduced productivity, falls and accidents, and depression. Drinking too much water before bed contributes to nocturia, especially for people with certain conditions such as kidney disease or diabetes, or those who are taking diuretic medicines.
Double voiding refers to spending extra time on the toilet to try to empty your bladder completely. Many women rush to get off the toilet and leave urine inside the bladder. Over months and years of doing this, it may become harder for the bladder to fully empty.
One of the most common early signs of diabetes is a need to pee more often during the day. But it can also happen at night.
Needing to urinate right after you've just gone is not only annoying but can be a sign of an underlying health problem. While this is commonly related to drinking a lot of water or taking medication, sometimes, it could mean something more serious like an infection or diabetes.