Nocturia can be an extremely inconvenient condition that causes a person to wake up repeatedly in the middle of the night with an urgent need to urinate. This can disrupt sleeping patterns and increase your chance of developing sleep disorders, such as insomnia or sleep apnea.
Nocturia is more common in older people and occurs in both men and women, and can happen for a number of different reasons.
Nocturia, or frequent urination, is categorized by waking up more than once in the night to go to the bathroom, and sleep disruption that results in fatigue.
Our bodies typically produce around one to one and a half liters of urine each day. Our bladders hold urine until we are ready to urinate. We know we're ready to urinate because the brain sends signals to the bladder, causing it to contract.
We should be able to sleep through the night without needing to take multiple trips to the bathroom. If you're taking two or more trips, that's a sign you're dealing with nocturia.
Because multiple bathroom trips interfere with sleep, nocturia may become a severe problem that needs to be treated by a medical professional. Nocturia can cause fatigue-related accidents and interrupted sleep increases the risk for many illnesses and conditions.
Your doctor may ask how many times you need to urinate in the middle of the night, the volume of urine being voided, how much caffeine you typically drink, how much alcohol you typically drink, and if your frequent urination is causing sleep deprivation.
Nocturia may be caused by many things. A main cause of nocturia, however, is an increased fluid intake. Drinking high amounts of caffeine or alcohol before bed may cause nocturia, as both liquids act as diuretics.
A diuretic is a substance that increases the production of urine. This causes our brain to send a signal to the bladder that we need to urinate more frequently. This is a common experience for people who drink a lot of caffeine or who binge-drink alcohol and find themselves needing to frequent the toilet more than usual.
Occasionally, we can find ourselves in a pattern of needing the toilet in the middle of the night. If your night-time toilet visits have become a routine, your brain may wake you up and disrupt your sleep to continue this routine. It's important to talk to your doctor if you think this may be the case.
Medications may increase the amount of urine produced or cause the need to urinate at night.
Some underlying health conditions may be responsible for nocturia. Here are a few of the main ones-
Diabetes
Having consistent high blood sugar may cause a urinary tract infection. Urinary tract infections cause a sensation of needing to consistently urinate, even if there's no urine within the body. People with diabetes may also suffer from nocturia due to the need to get rid of excess glucose. The kidneys may work through the night and produce more urine, causing the need to urinate at night.
Bladder Stones
Bladder stones, much like kidney stones, are hard lumps formed of minerals that are held within the bladder. This is usually due to the bladder not being fully emptied of urine. People with bladder stones may feel pain when urinating as well as a frequent urge to use the toilet.
Overactive Bladder
People with an overactive bladder typically experience sudden urges to urinate frequently. If you have an overactive bladder, it's common for you to also experience nocturia, but not all people with nocturia have an overactive bladder. Having an overactive bladder means that you urinate eight or more times in a day and experience difficulty controlling urges to urinate, sometimes resulting in unintentional urination.
Menopause
People experiencing menopause may have an increased likelihood of experiencing nocturia. Because your body is experiencing a decrease of estrogen, you're more likely to have sleep disturbances. These disturbances can then lead to sleep disorders such as sleep apnea and insomnia. Sleep apnea has been found to increase chances of nocturia - so it's a bit of an endless cycle. The hot flashes experienced with menopause may also disrupt sleep and increase the chances of nocturia developing through habit formation.
A drop in estrogen may impact kidney function as well as bladder dysfunction. Bladder dysfunction is a broad term used to diagnose issues with how the bladder holds and releases urine. A lack of estrogen may result in an increased risk of bladder and urinary tract infections, which can also lead to nocturia.
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