Hoping this is the right quadrant to post this. I’ve tried to research this, asked a couple of doctors, and have yet to get any useful info.
We’ve all woken up having to pee badly. What I’ve observed (blearily!) is that sometimes one quite plausibly has to go a lot, but sometimes only a little. Yes, I’m in my late 50s, but this isn’t blockage: when I’m done, I’m really done. But sometimes there’s only a little, and it’s not bright yellow or strong-smelling.
Why is this? Ph is my SWAG, but without any supporting evidence at all. Some other concentration (sodium/potassium/plutonium/etc.)? Anyone? I suppose if I were energetic enough, I could buy a chemistry set and collect samples and test them, but surprise, at 5AM when I’m standing there, I’m not really into that.
Concerning the actual question, my understanding is that when some urine enters the urethra the urinating reflex activates and you badly want to pee. That is not proportional to the amount of urine in your bladder at that moment, it is just that the body wants to flush out the urine in the urethra and uses the rest of the urine in the bladder for that. It is hard to stop in mid urination. It seems that leaving those first drops of urine in the urethra could cause an infection (urethritis). If my experience is any guide, the older you get, the more often this happens in the middle of the night, usually at a time when you are not yet properly rested but late enough not to be able to fall deeply asleep anymore, so you will feel groggy and grumpy until it is time for lunch. Why those few drops get released more often as I get older beats me, some muscle relaxes easier and the prostata blocks less or whatever. It this trend continues I will end up wetting my bed again like when I was a little boy.
While this is a factual question, it’s also medical advice. We move all medical (and legal, and other professional) advice to the IMHO category, as a way of emphasizing that most of the responses you’re getting aren’t from doctors, and even any doctors who might be responding, you don’t know that they’re doctors, and they’re not doing a proper examination, so you should treat all responses as coming from some random schlub on the Internet, not as medical advice.
That sure fits all the parameters. Certainly not arguing with it, but do you have any references for this? My doctor would probably be interested (yeah, it’s a concierge practice, she has time to be interested in stuff).
@Chronos: Thanks and sorry. I did search, found a couple of things in General Questions that were vaguely related. Will try to remember for future–the logic for putting stuff here makes perfect sense, of course!
What I wanted to write was that there is a mechanism for activating the peeing reflex and that this reflex is activated more often and at more inconvenient times as I get older, but urination is completely normal. I am not a doctor myself and I guess that a proper doctor could get pissed (ehem…) when a layman tries to explain her something she has studied professionally.
What I can tell you is that alcohol, coffeine and nicotine can aggravate that diuretic feeling.
This is a good question. In my experience there has never been a perfect correlation between how badly I feel like I need to go, and how much comes out when I do—even when I was much younger, so I wouldn’t just blame prostate issues.
But I am a wee bit disappointed that this thread isn’t about how loud a band named Urinary Urgency plays.
That was my immediate guess as well. If it’s dark and he’s not getting enough fluids, I would have thought mild to moderate dehydration. Kidney disease can have relatively quiet onset but one telltale sign that would probably accompany changes in urination would be pretty noticeable fatigue. Assuming he doesn’t have that, I’m guessing enlarged prostate, which happens with age. Get a prostate exam regularly to make sure there’s no cancer.
How’s your caffeine consumption, OP? I’ve heard that people can drink a tremendous amount of plain water and not feel an urgent need to go, but caffeine is a different beast.
Maybe you don’t need these notes, but others might: your main doctor can feel around during an ordinary checkup to see if your prostate is enlarged. Not fun, but neither you nor your doctor are there to have fun. An enlarged prostate is just something that happens to some older men, and doesn’t necessarily mean cancer, but the prostate can become large enough to interfere with urination, even prevent it entirely.
A urologist has modern tools to deal with all this, including devices for measuring how much urine is in a non-empty bladder. A urologist can also perform out-patient surgery to remove part of the prostate. Fun, not at all, but much better than alternatives.
(No, I Am Not A Doctor.)
Me, I think that there must be some small village called Nether Twinges. If there isn’t, I’d like to contribute towards its founding.
My own anecdotal contribution concerns my years with undiagnosed sleep apnea (now happily far in the past). I would typically get up every 45 minutes to pee, and I thought that was why I wasn’t getting any sleep. It was the other way around. I was sleeping so lightly that even the slightest urge to pee was enough to wake me up.
Now a typical night for me has me getting up 2 or 3 times during the night, and it has been that way for years. I don’t have any problem going back to sleep, possibly because my body is so triggered to sleep when I am using my CPAP.
My personal takeaway from this is that, if your sleep cycle is moving upwards towards lighter sleep at the same time that your body notices the need to pee, that may be enough to get you out of bed, while if your sleep is in deep or REM sleep it may not, for the same amount of “need to pee;” and so a greater need to pee may be required to get you out of bed and that may mean more urine to dispose of.
By the way, since it came up above, usually a physical rectal exam won’t reveal prostate cancer at a treatable stage. The PSA blood test is unreliable (I speak from bitter experience); there is a urine test but as I understand it that has to be performed more often to get a baseline and then for diagnosis of a problem; and there is a newer blood test that may not be in wide usage, called Parsortix, that is supposed to be able to diagnose aggressive prostate cancer (non-aggressive prostate cancer may not be worth treating, at least in older men).
