First, I am not seeking medical advice here. I am in consultation with my physician regarding all medical matters. I’m just trying to broaden my knowledge.
What might be the range of possible causes of frequent urination (every 2-3 hours and soon after any significant intake of fluids) if glucose levels are found to be well within normal? Could intake of 2-3 liters of fluids a day (mostly water, but some coffee/tea/soda) account for it?
Drinking excess fluids will definitely make you pee more often, especially caffeinated drinks. That’s all I’ve got.
I had a similar issue a few years back and when my doctor verified that I didn’t have diabetes I started reducing the amount of fluid I was taking in during the day. Low and behold the problem went away. I was drinking diet sodas all day long and had fallen for the “you must drink 8 glasses of water a day” mantra my wife believed in. It turns out your body has a very sophisticated way of controlling your fluid requirements… it’s called thirst. I started to only drink when I was thirsty and now only urinate a few times a day. Of course YMMV…
I have the same issue and I chalk it up to not only drinking a ton of water, but coffee as well, which is a diuretic (caffeine is rather).
Back when I became diabetic, one of the first symptoms I noticed was the frequent peeing. My wife looked it up and said that the two most likely causes were diabetes and Toxic Shock Syndrome.
Me: I think we can rule out Toxic Shock…
Wife: Why?
Me: There’s a reason they call it that…
And, recent studies have shown that caffeine isn’t as much of a diuretic (pee-inducer) in habitual caffeine users. So, if you have several caffeinated drinks a day, it doesn’t increase your output more than that of people who have several non-caffeinated drinks a day.
I could well be a urinary tract infection, frequent urination is often one of the symptoms. You should consult your doctor, he’ll be able to test your urine for infection and give you something to clear it up.
I don’t go that often (51-year-old man) but I am not so sure that every 2-3 hours and soon after any significant intake of fluids would be considered abnormally frequent. If I drink a glass of water an hour I am going to be peeing every hour.
IANAHP (healthcare professional), this is not medical advice, I know more about animals than I do people (although basic physiology is similar in mammals), etc.
What goes in, must come out, one way or another. Assuming your insensible losses (such as from your skin, mucous membranes, and lungs) and sweat output have not dramatically changed, drinking more is going to make you pee more.
The technical term for drinking and peeing a lot is PU/PD, which stands for polyuria (peeing a lot)/polydipsia (drinking a lot). They generally go together, due to aforementioned laws of conservation of matter.
The question is, are you peeing more because you are drinking more, or are you drinking more in order to keep up with peeing more?
Drinking more than you need to (polydipsia first) is usually psychological, i.e., you are drinking more just for the heck of it, because you like what you are drinking, because it’s a nervous habit, etc. I drink water constantly at restaurants, waaaaay more than I need. It’s fine until I get in the car to drive home and have to go 5 minutes after we leave the restaurant. Some mentally ill people, if not prevented, will drink themselves to death from hyponatremia. I have seen horses who drink excessively in the summer (psychogenic polydipsia) – their water needs are somewhat increased due to increased losses, but a few horses just won’t stop, going through multiple buckets a day of water and flooding their stalls with urine. The urinalyses, kidney function tests, and metabolic panels all came back normal on these horses and the behavior waned in the fall.
Lots of different things could cause polyuria which dehydrates you and causes polydipsia to compensate. Kidney disease is a big one in cats. Liver disease. Diabetes insipidus is a lack of ADH (or lack of response to ADH) which keeps your kidneys from concentrating urine. Metabolic disorders, such as Cushing’s disease, can cause PU/PD. As you mentioned, diabetes mellitus can cause PU/PD - the glucose in the urine pulls water into the urine by osmosis. Electrolyte imbalances and some drugs can cause PU/PD.
Waiting for QtM, Pullet, or someone else to come along and give a real answer, as opposed to my half-cocked ramblings.
Enlarged prostate, maybe?
Enlarged prostate can lead to incomplete emptying of the bladder, which would result in feeling/urge to go relatively soon after urination. Initially, you feel relieved, but since the bladder is not completely empty, you will be ‘going’ again a lot sooner that if you emptied the first time.
It doesn’t sound severe enough to be diabetes insipidus, but that is a condition which makes you drink and urinate a ton. It’s unrelated to diabetes mellitus, what we normally think of as ‘diabetes’, except in that when left untreated, both make you pee a lot.
Are you desperately thirsty all the time? Diabetes insipidus is a condition where the body doesn’t make enough/any of the hormone that tells the kidneys to hold on to water, so someone with it dehydrates unless drinking huge volumes of water. I learned about it from this case study; IANAD, and all the usual disclaimers apply.