Have you ever wonder why you're waking up so much at night to urinate? Well, I'm Dr. Rena Malik,
urologist and pelvic surgeon, and today I'm going to explain what exactly are the causes of waking
up to urinate at night. If you like what you see make sure you subscribe and hit that notification
bell so you don't miss any new videos and if you're wondering what to do about waking up at
night, make sure you tune in next week where I'm gonna give you eight actionable items to help you
stop waking up so much at nighttime. So waking up at night to urinate is called nocturia and
we define nocturia as waking up two or more times at night time to urinate and that does not include
the urination right before bed or the urination right in the morning when you wake up and so even
though i think that this is the definition i think even if you're waking up one time at night this
can be pretty bothersome for a lot of people i think the real key before i dive into why this
happens is to look at what happens when you wake up are you waking up with an urge to go to the
bathroom like gotta go gotta go and that's what wakes you up and that's why you go to the bathroom
or are you having other reasons that you're up and then you're going to the bathroom because those
are two very separate things if you're waking up because of other reasons and then going to the
bathroom because you're already awake then you need to work on sleep hygiene and exactly why
you're not sleeping well at night and at some point i am going to make a video on ways to
sleep better at night because i think sleep is so important not only for your urologic health but
for your overall health and so many different facets of your health okay so if you're then
waking up at night a lot and it's not because you're being disrupted for another reason
there can be kind of a branch of why this happens it can be because either your bladder capacity
has changed so you're holding less urine at night and that could be because of a number
of different things so that can be due to over activity of the bladder where the bladder spasms
and before your bladder is full and gives you the sensation of an urge to urinate
and the reasons for that are many this can happen because you have overactive bladder which
can happen for a number of different reasons this can happen because you have an obstruction like a
large prostate that is blocking urinary flow and making your bladder more overactive
or if you're a woman and you've had surgery like a sling or something else around the urethra
that can cause some constriction of the urethra and make it so that your body is perceiving as
this blocking urine flow it can also be if you have overactive bladder because of a neurologic
condition or because of age or other factors that may be causing your bladder to be over active if
there is an underlying cause to that over activity in the first step is to treat that cause another
cause could be if the compliance of your bladder has changed what that means is that normally your
bladder is really elastic like a balloon it just expands and expands and the pressure doesn't go
up very much but if you've had certain problems like you've had a neurologic injury or you have
had radiation this can change the compliance of your bladder so that it becomes more stiff and it
actually holds less urine the other branch point that may be causing you to wake up more at night
is if you're actually making more urine volume and why does that happen well interestingly as you age
after about 65 years of age you will make one third of your urine volume at night so naturally
most people after 65 will wake up one time and that's within normal limits so if you're making
a lot of urine at night one it can be because of those age-related changes or you could be just
making a lot of more urine which can be a sign of a medical condition like diabetes mellitus
diabetes insipidus or something called primary polydipsia where you're getting the urge to
drink a lot of fluids throughout the day because there's a abnormality in the hormone system that
controls your thirst centers and these can be treated with medical therapy by seeing a pro
your primary care doctor also if you have edema or swelling of your lower extremities because
of things like congestive heart failure or some sort of insufficiency or problem with your veins
then that fluid can then be mobilized when you're finally lying in bed at night and make you have
more urine output actually at nighttime and the last thing that can cause urinary symptoms or
waking up at night to urinate is sleep problems so very commonly we'll find that people who have
obstructive sleep apnea or even undiagnosed obstructive sleep apnea will often wake up
at night to urinate and how do you know that you have obstructive sleep apnea well sometimes you
may notice that when you wake up in the morning you don't feel rested and if you have a partner
who sleeps in the same bed as you they may notice that when you're sleeping at night you often kind
of stop breathing and and make a noise and then go back to sleep and so that may be a sign that you
have obstructive sleep apnea also a widened neck circumference is sometimes a sign of obstructive
sleep apnea so definitely if you are thinking that you're waking up a lot and you're not feeling
rested and you're having any of these other things please bring this up with your primary care doctor
so before i end here i want to say one last thing if you are an elderly person or someone who has
some mobility issues getting to the bathroom the biggest fear that i have and your other doctors
will have is that you might fall on the way to the bathroom so there's some things that you can do
to make it so that you get to the bathroom safely one is you can get some motion censored lights
that light up when you walk to the bathroom so you don't have to worry about turning on a light
or seeing or stumbling along the way because you don't see something in your path on the way to the
bathroom two you can use something like a urinal or a bedside commode that can actually just be at
the bedside and so you don't have to really get up or go too far to urinate and three make sure
that the pathway to the bathroom or the commode is very clear that there is nothing in on your
way especially right before you go to bed walk through it make sure it's completely clear so
you're not gonna trip on anything later at night all right well i hope you enjoyed this video thank
you so much for watching and as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it