How do we have any control over not peeing while we sleep?
In: Biology
Your entire brain does not fall asleep. A significant part of your brain is still working at reduced capacity and some is even fully awake even in your sleep. Specifically the area near your brain stem, in the “core” of your brain, is always awake. This is responsible for a lot of your instinctual behaviour and a lot of primitive behaviours. Things like breathing, temperature control, moving when you are uncomfortable, etc. And this includes your bowel movement and peeing.
The same way we have control over breathing and our heartbeat. The brain continues to control essential functions of your body whether you are awake/conscious or not.
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You’re not actively concentrating on not peeing the whole time you’re awake…sleep doesn’t “deactivate” the part of your brain that is 🙂
also morning boners
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While you sleep, your body releases a hormone called vassopressin, which makes your kidneys reabsorb water instead of sending it to the bladder. This means you produce less urine overnight.
Small children don’t usually produce enough vassopressin to stay dry for the whole night until they’re 3-7 years old.
Side question: how can sometimes your dreams be so vivid you are in the bathroom that you can actually start to pee
Just want to add something here. There are clumps of neurons in your spinal cord (in lower back) that tell your bladder (more like urethra) to hold the pee in. These neurons are always active no matter if you are asleep or not. When you actually want to pee, you need to consciously command another clump of neurons to open up the urethra. So when you are sleeping, the “do not pee” neurons are always active and prevent you from peeing your bed.
Most of “hollow” organs have a layer of (involuntary) muscle around them. Some parts of this muscles constrits and relaxes, like doors, involuntary. The basically stay closed while you sleep
pretty much the only dreams i have tend to end with me having to piss in-dream but not being able to pee anywhere then i wake up and have to go piss. sometimes im trying to have dream-sex but gotta pee before fucking and cant find anywhere to go
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