Dealing with Nighttime Incontinence

Nighttime incontinence is very inconvenient. It disrupts your evening from having an otherwise good and relaxed sleep. This happens because your nighttime incontinence would typically move you out of the bed to urinate. If you’re even that unfortunate, you would not be able to hold your pee and you would end up wetting your bed or yourself like a little kid.

The reason why this happens with nighttime incontinence is because of an overactive bladder. Our bladders generally produce more highly concentrated urine at night, with it dwindling in amount as compared with how much was produced throughout the day. This thus allows us normally to sleep in eight hours without the need to get up and relieve ourselves. However, those with an overactive bladder are unable to function as normally as it should. They have nocturia which stimulates the bladder to pee.

These days, there are a number of treatments offered for an overactive bladder. But they are more than just taking some medicines. You should either pair them with surgery or try to opt for a behavioral modification treatment. The medicines would only come in as support for either of these treatments.

So if you suspect to have an overactive bladder, you should already take careful measures to prevent yourself from being interrupted when sleeping. It might be a good to have a towel around you or have some baby wipes you can easily grab should accidents happen. Aside from that, there are several tips you can also keep in mind to help you get through your nighttime incontinence.

Aside from this, you should also be more careful on your lifestyle in terms of drinking. Don’t drink a few hours before you sleep and you should also refrain from taking too much alcohol at night. The latter is known to stimulate urine production.

Be aware too of the foods that you eat. You should consider keeping away from caffeinated foods and liquids especially when you are about to sleep. Caffeine is known to be diuretic and can irritate the bladder, thus forcing it to urinate more than usual.

Before going to bed, try to also urinate twice. This way, you can be sure that you have already emptied your bladder thus making you least likely to take more frequent trips to the bathroom. Sometimes you might not feel it yet but when you try to get into the restroom you’d be able to urinate even just a few bit.

You should also make yourself more familiar with Kegel exercises. They are effective when it comes to regulating your bladder activity. The Kegel exercises help relieve nighttime incontinence because it relaxes the bladder by settling spasms that make the urge uncontrollable. It might not totally prevent you from peeing as much but at least you would be able to hold it until you reach the restroom.