My husband was not sleeping well at nights. He used to wake up a couple of times in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and that disturbed his sleep and mine. Many times it was difficult for him to come back to sleep, and he remained awake for long hours. He was tired during the day, without energy, and he felt weak and irritable. I convinced him to go to the doctor, because I was worried about him and tired of my disturbed nights.
The first thing the doctor did was ask some routine questions, as the amount of liquids that my husband ingested before bedtime, or if he drank alcohol frequently after dinner. The negative answers ruled out an easy solution for my husband problem: to control the amount of liquids he ingested before go to bed. After that, we follow to the next step:
The doctor talked to us about a condition named nocturia. This is the frequent need of urinate in the middle of the night. Normally, the urine becomes more concentrate and decreases its amount at night, but in the case of people with nocturia, something is interfering with the urine nocturnal production. The reasons for this condition can be several:
-sleep apnea (when we stop breathing while we sleep)
-heart failure
-some medications
Yes, there are a lot of possible causes for excessive urination at night or nocturia, but often, the cause is an irritated bladder or an enlarged prostate.
The way we can know the reason for excessive urinating at night is to have an urine test, where they will check the blood urea nitrogen, the urine concentration or the level of electrolytes.
The treatment for nocturia depends of the condition that causes it. If we are using medicines that are making us urinate more frequently, the doctor will change them, or making us taking them during the day.
Of course, a basic treatment for excessive urination at night is to control the amount of liquids we ingest before bedtime, and it is a good idea to reduce the caffeine and the alcohol. My grandmother claimed that the cold make you urinate more, so maybe applying heat to the kidneys and bladder would help as well.
My husband was checked out for problems in his prostate, mainly because his grandfather suffered from prostate cancer. But the exam didn’t reveal any big problem, but the doctor gave to him Finasteride, a medicine that is used to treat symptomatic benign prostate hyperplasia, BPH, in men with enlarged prostate. This medication reduces symptoms as frequent urination, and it reduces the progression of the enlargement.
My husband is urinating less at night, and he is sleeping much better. That is a good thing, because, I sleeping better too!
