An enlarged prostate can also cause you to have to pee more at night. It can pinch your urethra closed, making it harder for you to completely empty your bladder. It can make you feel like you have to urinate all the time, Dr. Ulchaker says.
Nighttime urination, also known as nocturia, can affect men and women at any age. The more common causes are entirely benign, though nocturia can also be triggered by certain health conditions and medications. In fact, one of the strongest diuretics known to man isn't something you eat or drink.
Cause of urinary problems as men age
In older men, symptoms may be due to a blockage in the tubes due to a benign (non-cancerous) enlargement of the prostate gland (benign prostatic hyperplasia – BPH). The most common symptom is difficulty emptying your bladder.
Typically, you should be able to sleep six to eight hours during the night without having to get up to go to the bathroom. But, people who have nocturia wake up more than once a night to pee. This can cause disruptions in your normal sleep cycle, and leave you tired and with less energy during the day.
“It's normal for men as we age to get up to go,” says urologist James Ulchaker, MD. “In fact, it's normal for a 60-year-old man to get up once, a 70-year-old man to get up twice and an 80-year-old man to get up three times a night.”
Nocturia is most often caused by nocturnal polyuria, a condition where the kidneys produce too much urine. That's why treating nocturia at the source is so important. If you're only focused on curing, say, overactive bladder, you're only targeting the bladder, not the kidneys.
Nocturia is often one of the first symptoms of an enlarged prostate. The key reason is that during the night, having your sleep disturbed makes the need to urinate frequently more obvious than during the day.
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.
While it's not uncommon for people over 60 to urinate once or twice a night, if you urinate more than twice a night you should consider consulting a doctor.
Nighttime urination is very common in men over age 50 and causes significant inconvenience due to lack of restful sleep. An enlarged prostate is the most common reason that men have an urge to pee at night sometimes once or twice a night, but when severe, they may need to wake up to pee as many as 8-10 times a night.
Drinking too much fluid during the evening can cause you to urinate more often during the night. Caffeine and alcohol after dinner can also lead to this problem. Other common causes of urination at night include: Infection of the bladder or urinary tract.
Increased fluid intake: Excessive fluid intake directly suppresses ADH secretion. As explained earlier, ADH regulates fluid levels in our body and promotes getting rid of excess fluid. If we consume more fluid than we actually need, our bodies will want to get rid of that fluid in the form of urine leading to nocturia.
Bananas and other high-fiber foods can be good for urinary tract health and preventing urinary tract infections (UTIs) by encouraging regular bowel movements and relieving pressure on urine flow.
Frequent urination is the need to pee more often than average (seven to eight times) throughout the day. It can happen to anyone, but it's more common in people over the age of 70, pregnant people and people with an enlarged prostate. The most common cause is urinary tract infections.
It's considered normal to have to urinate about six to eight times in a 24-hour period. If you're going more often than that, it could simply mean that you may be drinking too much fluid or consuming too much caffeine, which is a diuretic and flushes liquids out of the body.
“Nocturia is most commonly caused by an enlarged prostate,” says Alex Shteynshlyuger, MD, director of urology at New York Urology Specialists in New York City. “Most men experience the need to wake up to urinate as a consequence of prostate enlargement in their 50s and 60s.
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.
Healthy urinary frequency
Most people pee 6 or 7 times every 24 hours. Peeing between 4 and 10 times daily may be considered healthy if the frequency does not interfere with the person's quality of life.
“Our study indicates that if you need to urinate in the night – called nocturia – you may have elevated blood pressure and/or excess fluid in your body,” said study author Dr Satoshi Konno, of the Division of Hypertension, Tohoku Rosai Hospital, Sendai, Japan.