Are You Forcing Out Your Pee?
Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of clients who have been ‘pushing’ their pee out of their body. I wanted to drop some knowledge about this as it’s not always the best way to flow.
When I was a kid, my Mama used to take me to the washroom on strict occasions: right before showering, right before bed, right before eating and right before getting into the car. Oh Ma...if you had known that your methods screwed up my bladder and pelvic floor, would you have changed your urination schedule?
Until I became a pelvic health physiotherapist, I had been going to the washroom ‘just in case’. I had also conditioned myself to want to pee whenever I saw a washroom or talked about peeing. On the other hand, I could also postpone peeing whenever it was convenient: I could hold my pee for up to twelve hours if I was out all night long with friends.
My urination pattern had become unnatural. In this modern world, toileting practice had been dictated by my work and social activities. If I had clients back-to-back for six hours or more, I would go ‘just in case’ before seeing clients. I would then hold my pee until the end of the day. If I was home, I would pee four times in an hour just before I left for work, again ‘just in case’. Urinating used to be an involuntary regulated reflex, but it had turned into a voluntary one.
In a healthy urinating pattern, the stretch receptors in your bladder detect that you have stored some pee, but you can hold it in until the bladder is full. When it’s full, the bladder contracts. The urine is pushed out into the urethra and the pelvic floor relaxes so that the pee can exit the body. It’s a pretty awesome mechanism when you think about it. (This is the geek in me coming out!)
But if you’ve been a control freak over your bladder, you contract and push with abdominal straining to force the pee out faster than it would naturally or when it doesn’t need to come out at all. In addition to forcing the pee out, there can also be the feeling that the bladder is not completely emptied and you feel the urge to urinate when you’ve just gone.
The outcome is that you create this dysfunctional voiding pattern that can be a vicious cycle. You keep contracting the pelvic floor and as a result it gets tighter and tighter over time. The bladder becomes overactive and contracts more and more when it’s not even full. This eventually turns your pelvic floor into hypertonic myofascial tissues (aka tight muscles).
If you can imagine your biceps already contracted and shortened (showing your guns 💪), and then you try to contract it more, you can’t do it because there is no room to contract. The biceps are poorly used and become weak in the end. The same thing happens to your pelvic floor muscles. The pelvic floor muscles are shortened and there is less contractility.
This can lead to way bigger issues including:
Bladder pain
Trouble emptying your bladder
Leaking of urine
Pain with sex.
So, should you pee ‘just in case’? NO!
Lesson of the day: don’t pee just because it’s convenient for you. Listen and trust your mind and body - it knows when to pee.