Maybe you're always begging for bathroom breaks on car trips. Maybe you wake up to tinkle twice every night. Maybe you're just worried about the sheer amount of pee that flows from your body. Should you be concerned?
Not likely, according to the experts. Yes, too frequent urination, in combination with other symptoms, can be a sign of a medical problem. But there's such a wide variance of acceptable urination levels, chances are you fall well within the norm.
The average human pees six or seven times per day, according to the Bowel and Bladder Foundation. But Dr. Sven Wenske, a urologist with the Columbia University Medical Center, is wary of telling people these numbers. It's more important, he says, to make sure your pee sensation feels healthy than to count the number of times you go.
1. You control more about your pee than you think.
Pee "is dependent on fluid intake," Wenske told HuffPost.
A person who consumes five liters of water per day, for example, may have to pee 10 times, Women's Health & Fitness explains, while someone who drinks less should have the urge less often. (The Institute of Medicine advises humans to drink between 2.7 and 3.7 liters per day, though you can also gauge the level you need by your pee color. More on that later.)
The type of liquid you drink factors in, too: Coffee can irritate your bladder, Wenske says, making you have to pee more than if you were just drinking water. And older people have smaller bladder capacities, according to the National Library of Medicine, which explains why grandma always has to pull over during road trips.
2. Still, you should listen to your bladder.
"When you're getting up several times a night, feeling like you can't empty your bladder completely, are straining [to get pee out] or experiencing pain, those are obvious symptoms that something’s not right," Wenske says.
Men over 40 should visit a urologist regularly to check for enlarged prostate and prostate cancer, according to the Cleveland Clinic. And all of us should be on the lookout for overactive bladder, diabetes and other conditions.
3. For those of you without a condition, there's a trick to quieting your bladder.
If you want to wee less, Wenske recommends keeping a diary with every instance of drinking and peeing, and consulting with a doctor about changes that could help you. He also recommends avoiding liquid starting three hours before bedtime. And for the occasional leakage issue, a few Kegels never hurt either, as Mayo Clinic explains.
4. Just make sure you're hydrating correctly!
Keeping track of volume shouldn't matter for pee, and it may not apply to hydration, either. Experts say the most foolproof way to tell if you're drinking enough water is to make sure your pee stays light-colored all day long, which means your cells have all the liquid they need.
So calm down, drink up, and don't worry about the wee.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this post suggested that older people have smaller bladders. However, it's more accurate to say that the bladder becomes less stretchy with age and therefore can't hold as much urine. Language has also been updated to note that evaluating a diary that tracks fluid intake and urination should be done with the assistance of a doctor.
