I’ve read that holding your bladder can cause various complications such as UTIs, but do these potential complications stop when asleep? Why?
In: Biology
Your body shuts down, well more accurately slows down, the kidney while you sleep – you don’t make any urine to fill up the bladder.
The body doesn’t shut down. . Typically people urinate before bed and many people get up to pee in the night.
It doesn’t become less harmful, that’s why morning pee is so urgent.
I think the scale of time when consciously holding your bladder becomes dangerous far exceeds an 8 hour sleep (assuming you pee before bed).
Two minutes after getting out of bed, first stop is the bathroom. The kidneys know. X- File music playing in my head.
I have issues sleeping and wake up very often, and almost every time I’ll end up peeing…
1: Generally all body processes slow down during sleep, so the filtration process that creates urine also slows down.
2: You consistently produce urine at a certain rate during the day because you’re drinking and eating. You’re not doing those things while you sleep, so the urine production slows as intake slows.
3: The actual risk of UTI from holding it over a short period of time has been kind of overblown. Yes, it’s true that people should have free and open access to bathroom facilities, but the whole “if I don’t get to go at my instant whim I cOuLd gEt A dIseaSe” thing is, for the most part, for most people…just not accurate.
Your pituitary secretes more antidiuretic hormone when you sleep so your kidneys absorb more water while you sleep. This results in an overall decreased amount of urine produced. This is also why your urine in the morning is usually pretty dark and concentrated since a lot of the water was reabsorbed
A large part of it is that you aren’t adding any liquids while you sleep. You’re sweating and panting and drooling and losing far more moisture than you’re gaining, unlike daytime when you’re drinking and eating. So, all these fancy science answers AND no liquids going in for 6-8 hours helps.
There is a point where delaying urination can be harmful, but usually either:
* your life happens to be timed such that you do not reach that point while asleep (for instance, if you pee shortly before bed, then you might not need to pee througout the night or when you wake up)
* you wake up from sleep with a feeling that you need to pee, and so you do pee, and thus you are not harmed
The brain releases vasopressin during deep sleep. This hormone slows urine production substantially. If you have sleep apnea, you’re not getting deep sleep causing bathroom trips. When I got a CPAP machine, my night-time trips to the can decreased to zero.
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