Nocturia: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatment

Are your sweet dreams interrupted by trips to the bathroom? A potential culprit behind peeing a lot at night is Nocturia or Nocturnal Polyuria. This condition causes a disruption in sleep resulting from frequent urination at night and may cause bed-wetting in adults. About one in three adults over the age of 30 experience Nocturia.

While risk increases with age, Nocturia causes may be linked to lifestyle habits or underlying health issues such as:

Nocturia can also be an early sign of pregnancy. The condition often develops at the beginning of pregnancy, or later when the growing womb presses against the bladder, resulting in frequent urination at night for females. Nocturia may continue in postpartum individuals, especially when your body is trained to frequently wake up in the middle of the night to breast or bottle-feed.

An individual should be able to sleep six to eight hours during the night without getting up to go to the bathroom. If you suffer from Nocturia, you are likely waking up periodically throughout the night, disrupting your normal sleep cycle. Additionally, you are training your bladder to go when it is not full. Over time, this resets the pressure sensors in your bladder and will send you to the bathroom more frequently at night, sometimes carrying over into increased daytime frequency as well.

Although adult bed-wetting may be an uncomfortable topic to discuss with your health care provider, an open discussion with your doctor will help identify the best Nocturia treatment options for you. Setting yourself up for blissful, uninterrupted sleep may feel impossible, but I recommend a few behavioral and lifestyle changes to get you back to a full night’s sleep:

Although Nocturia may be difficult to discuss with your doctor, it’s important to understand the condition is common and can improve with proper steps to identify its cause and treatment plan. For example, if you also experience frequent daytime urination, you may need to take steps to retrain your bladder.

Your doctor may also refer you to a pelvic floor physical therapist if frequent urination at night is caused by pelvic floor trauma or dysfunction. A pelvic floor physical therapist will offer specialized treatment to help retrain your bladder. You’ll learn how to improve pelvic floor muscle coordination to better manage urination urges and Nocturia.

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Author Summary: Dr. Heather Jeffcoat,DPT, Pelvic Health Physical Therapist is the founder of Fusion Wellness & Femina Physical Therapy(FeminaPT.com).Her work focuses on pelvic and sexual health education for all, and she lectures internationally on Female Sexual Dysfunction and chronic pelvic pain. She is also the author of Sex Without Pain: A Self Treatment Guide to the Sex Life You Deserve.