How Bladder Training Can Help with an Overactive Bladder

Thanks to your overactive bladder, you not only feel as if you have to urinate all the time, you don’t feel comfortable being any distance from a bathroom (just in case).

As a result, your life feels like it’s become a prisoner of your overactive bladder, and you want to break free. You’re in good company on this front, as 14.5% of men and 40% of women in the United States struggle with an overactive bladder.

As our name suggests — Arizona Urology — our team is dedicated to helping patients with urinary problems that lead to incontinence, and an overactive bladder (OAB) is often the culprit. 

While we offer some advanced treatments for OAB, such as neuromodulation with InterStim®, good old-fashioned bladder training can make a big difference in gaining control over your bladder.

Behind your overactive bladder

Let’s first look at what we’re up against when you have an overactive bladder. There's an interaction between your bladder and your brain that signals you when to pee. As your bladder fills, the muscles and peripheral nerves in the area send a signal to your brain, and your brain responds with the command to urinate.

With OAB, your bladder muscles act involuntarily, and the signaling goes a little haywire — you feel the need to urinate far more frequently, even when your bladder is empty. To put some numbers to it, most people urinate 4-7 times a day, while people with OAB go up to 30 times a day.

There are many roads to OAB, including:

• Childbirth and pregnancy, which can damage bladder nerves
• Neurological issues, such as multiple sclerosis or stroke
• Being overweight
• Enlarged prostate
• Lifestyle issues, such as drinking too much alcohol or caffeine

However your OAB developed, the good news is that you do have solutions, and bladder training should always play a role in managing it.

Back to school with bladder training

One of the most effective strategies for OAB is bladder training, which is a technique that retrains your bladder and your brain.

To get started, keep a diary of how often you urinate and how much urine comes out each time. Please also note how much you drink and whether you’re experiencing incontinence (leakage). 

With that in hand, we’ll come up with a good bladder training plan that will focus on:

Regular intervals

The first goal of bladder training is to set up a more workable schedule around urinating. We do this by scheduling your urination — perhaps once an hour to start. And then we’ll gradually increase the time between urinations so that your body transitions to a new schedule.

Wait to urinate

Another goal of bladder training is to extend the amount of time you can hold your urine. Once you set a schedule, you want to retrain your bladder to wait comfortably in between. At first, this might only be 5 minutes, but slowly you’ll extend the time that you can hold your urge to urinate.

A great strategy is to find ways to distract yourself when you feel the urge to pee — listen to music, try deep breathing, or anything else that keeps you both relaxed and your mind off of your bladder.

Don’t urinate "just in case”

Your OAB has likely trained you to urinate “just in case” a lot. We want you to curb that behavior and confine your urination to the times when you really need to urinate. Going "just in case” will only encourage your OAB.

There are other steps you should take while training your bladder, such as limiting caffeine, which is a diuretic that stimulates urination.

For a more detailed bladder training plan, it’s a good idea to sit down with one of our team members. To set that in motion, please schedule an appointment at one of our offices in Phoenix, Goodyear, Gilbert, and Glendale, Arizona, today.