Frequent Urination

[stpa92]

Hello all,

This is my first post on RP forum. I come here because conventional medicine has failed to address my problem in any appreciable way

I am 27 years old, but the problem began 5-6 years ago. It has gotten progressively worse since it began. I now feel the urge to urinate almost constantly throughout the day, and usually end up going every 45-1 hour. When I urinate my stream is very weak, and only a small volume of urine is voided. However, within a few minutes of going to the bathroom, I feel the urge again. At night, it is a little better as I can usually hold it for 2-3 hours at a night, but I am still waking up multiple times per night

I have seen multiple urologists over this time period. A CT of my bladder revealed thickened muscle walls, but cystoscopy (camera through the urethra) did not yield any explanation for this (no strictures, obstruction at the bladder neck etc).
I also had an ultrasound of my bladder done while I had an intense urge to urinate, and the doctor said that my bladder was almost empty (only a few ml). This makes me think that it a problem with the nerves innervating the bladder sending inappropriate signals to my brain

I have tried mediation (mirabegron) which did nothing for my frequency but made my memory hazy so I discontinued it. For now, I am just limiting my fluid intake (1 cup of coffee, and 1L of water is all that I drink during the day). But still very frequent, around 15x a day

A little more background information:
-The frequency is definitely correlated with stress/anxiety. When I am anxious I can go as much as 4x per hour. Only a few ml each time. Unfortunately I work in a very high-pressure environment so lowering the stress/anxiety levels is difficult for me.

-I am usually cold throughout the day, if the AC is set at 72 degrees in the house my feet are freezing.

-I am 5'9 165, not very active besides walking 45 minutes 3-4x a week with the wife

-Around the time that the urinary frequency started, I was diagnosed with low testosterone (I actually can't recall which came first). I self-supplemented for a while, then got a prescription for TRT. I was on it for about 2 years in total before I got off because my quality of life was no better (possibly worse) on testosterone. As of 2018 (last blood work) testosterone is around 370 (350-1000 reference range). I am not sure if this is related to the urinary frequency

Please advise, I need ideas on what this could be or advice on what I can do. It is becoming a real problem now, affecting both my sleep (frequently waking up at night, with difficulty falling back asleep) and my career (frequent bathroom breaks)

 

[MigFon]

What is your diet like?

 

[stpa92]

My diet is admittedly not the best, because I do not have much time during the day to prepare food

Breakfast is a cup of coffee +/- a banana
Lunch is usually 2 sandwiches (turkey and cheese on whole grain bread) and some vegetable chips
For dinner, half of the time I get takeout (sushi, tacos, burger, etc) and the other half my wife makes salad and some sort of dish: chicken with rice, beef and beans casserole, etc
Sometimes I snack on Greek yogurt or rarely, chocolate chips

I try to avoid fried foods, pasta, most sweets because they constipate me. I used to have a lot of problems with constipation but over the past year, my BM have been very consistent/good size

 

[marsaday]

Looks like you need to look at diet, but this sounds also like a hormonal issue.

I have had times when i have needed to pee a lot. I found this was related to my low thyroid level. This needs to be checked as low thyroid is often related to low testosterone in men. If the testosterone didnt help it maybe because the thyroid was to low. So many hormones work together and when one is out of balance the rest are affected. Thyroid is the conductor for our hormones.

I think i have asked about urination before and someone said cortisol / adrenaline can be high. This makes sense if thyroid is low because these hormones go up to compensate.

I have not been affected by the urination issue for many years now, so this is definitely related to my thyroid being under control a lot better.

 

[SOMO]

Eat more SALT.

Before you try anything wacky or esoteric, try increasing your salt intake significantly.

I mean several teaspoons of salt throughout the day, with food. You can add some to water or milk, but it can cause diarrhea if consumed without food.

 

[stpa92]

Looks like you need to look at diet, but this sounds also like a hormonal issue.

I have had times when i have needed to pee a lot. I found this was related to my low thyroid level. This needs to be checked as low thyroid is often related to low testosterone in men. If the testosterone didnt help it maybe because the thyroid was to low. So many hormones work together and when one is out of balance the rest are affected. Thyroid is the conductor for our hormones.

I think i have asked about urination before and someone said cortisol / adrenaline can be high. This makes sense if thyroid is low because these hormones go up to compensate.

I have not been affected by the urination issue for many years now, so this is definitely related to my thyroid being under control a lot better.

Interesting. I don't think I have ever had my thyroid levels checked. That could explain why I feel cold at room temp

 

[A.R]

Looks like you need to look at diet, but this sounds also like a hormonal issue.

I have had times when i have needed to pee a lot. I found this was related to my low thyroid level. This needs to be checked as low thyroid is often related to low testosterone in men. If the testosterone didnt help it maybe because the thyroid was to low. So many hormones work together and when one is out of balance the rest are affected. Thyroid is the conductor for our hormones.

I think i have asked about urination before and someone said cortisol / adrenaline can be high. This makes sense if thyroid is low because these hormones go up to compensate.

I have not been affected by the urination issue for many years now, so this is definitely related to my thyroid being under control a lot better.

Hope you continue to improve, well done.

Other than Thyroid, what would you say has helped you the most in alleviating the urine problem? I get bad effects when I have taken Thyroid in the past, so Im worried about trying it again

 

[yerrag]

Check your urine pH. An ideal range is 6.4-6.8 Test not just once but throughout the day. If you're getting very acidic values (below 5.5) it could easily cause you to have the urge even with little urine in the bladder. I had this experience before.

 

[lampofred]

Increased urination was caused by endotoxin for me. I was actually scared I was starting to develop diabetes but a few days of avoiding starch and keeping my gut healthy completely fixed the issue.

 

[stpa92]

Check your urine pH. An ideal range is 6.4-6.8 Test not just once but throughout the day. If you're getting very acidic values (below 5.5) it could easily cause you to have the urge even with little urine in the bladder. I had this experience before.

What could make my urine acidic? and where/what do I buy to test it?

 

[Cirion]

What could make my urine acidic? and where/what do I buy to test it?

lactic acid (from exertion or naturally produced as a result of hypothyroidism), acidic causing foods like excess protein to name a couple.

 

[rawmeat]

I second the salt.

My salt intake is optimal when my forearms are vascular--this is when I feel best too.

take a small scoop with every drink you have.

 

[Velve921]

I use to urinate 70x a day where I was sleeping in a bath tub.

The simplest explanation I can give you after years of work, get diet and lifestyle in line.

Every single aspect of Dr. Peat's vision has played a role.

 

[MigFon]

My diet is admittedly not the best, because I do not have much time during the day to prepare food

Breakfast is a cup of coffee +/- a banana
Lunch is usually 2 sandwiches (turkey and cheese on whole grain bread) and some vegetable chips
For dinner, half of the time I get takeout (sushi, tacos, burger, etc) and the other half my wife makes salad and some sort of dish: chicken with rice, beef and beans casserole, etc
Sometimes I snack on Greek yogurt or rarely, chocolate chips

I try to avoid fried foods, pasta, most sweets because they constipate me. I used to have a lot of problems with constipation but over the past year, my BM have been very consistent/good size

I would like to suggest to you a small experiment.

For three days, eat whatever you normally eat. At EVERY meal just try adding some source of saturated fat: cream, butter, full fat cheese, perhaps some 90+% Chocolate. Eat as much as you can eat of a saturated fat of your choice, at/after every meal.

If it doesn't improve things after three days, just move on to something else.

This is what worked for me. No more coldness, no more cold hands, no more high adrenalin, no more "low thyroid" or whatever, no more 6/7 bathroom pauses to pee, no more supplements.

 

[marsaday]

Interesting. I don't think I have ever had my thyroid levels checked. That could explain why I feel cold at room temp

There is a lot to look at regarding diet, but this is a big area and testing out what works or doesn't will take time. So try and get into a mindset where you have a new part time job and will need to do lots of trial and error to see if anything helps.

However, before you do any of that you will need to get a full blood panel done. You said you have low testosterone so this is a warning other stuff may be wrong.

For thyroid you will get TSH, FT3, FT4 and make sure you get the thyroid antibodies tested as well.

All these bloods must be done before you move forward because food can only help so much.

A very simple test thyroid patients use to assess their metabolic rate (and so their thyroid function) is to take the temperature in the mouth when you wake up. Don't move out of bed, just have the thermometer next to the bed. I work in celsius so you will have to convert, but a healthy WAKING temp is 36.6C. You can be good with temps around 36.2C, BUT when you get down to 36C and below this indicates all is not good with the thyroid.

The temp can then be taken in the day to see what temp you can get up to. 37C is the optimum. So if your body is struggling to get up to a temp then again it indicates low thyroid. Testosterone and thyroid will bounce off each other. Low thyroid men will have lower testosterone. Getting thyroid to work optimally in men can often mean needing some testosterone help as well. Not always, but the 2 seem to go together.

 

[marsaday]

Hope you continue to improve, well done.

Other than Thyroid, what would you say has helped you the most in alleviating the urine problem? I get bad effects when I have taken Thyroid in the past, so Im worried about trying it again

It was a good while ago and i think it was getting the right T4 level. I use T4 only pretty much as it works well for me. I never experimented with salt, but this is supposed to lower cortisol and adrenaline, so this should help as well. But if the body is broken because you are not putting out enough thyroid hormone then you want to work on this fix first.

 

[yerrag]

What could make my urine acidic? and where/what do I buy to test it?

The urine pH is a proxy for the body's extracellular fluid (ecf) pH and serum pH. The ecf pH should be around a very tight range from 7.35 - 7.45, ideally 7.4. Our kidneys regulate this pH within this tight band, and the excretion of acids through urine is part of this process of regulation. A range of 6.4 - 6.8 is the ideal range of urine pH. So when it falls below this range, the urine is said to be acidic. When it goes above this range, the urine is said to be basic or alkaline.

If your metabolism produces a lot of acidic waste, the body needs to excrete more acid through urine, and this makes your urine more acidic. A more acidic urine means that the body has to do more work, thru the kidneys, to maintain the ecf's tight pH range. It's because your metabolism isn't optimal. Instead of producing plenty of carbon dioxide as a by-product, you're producing lactic acid and/or keto acids. This could be because you're relying less on mitochondrial oxidative respiration for energy, and more on glycolysis (where lactic acid by-product is produced) or on fatty acid oxidation, where more keto-acids are produced.

I think, this is just my guess, that the increasingly acidic urine spurs your body to want to urinate even if your urinary bladder isn't full. The body may just want to get rid of this bad stuff.

Sometimes it's not just your metabolism. Some supplements or medicine would be an acidic load on your system, and would cause your body to waste its energy on correcting for this acidic load. Acidic urine would cause you to urinate more. I used to test for urine pH going down to less than 5.5. When you take urine pH measurements, take tests throughout the day. It gives a better snapshot of your status than relying on just one measurement during the day. Urine pH varies throughout the day.

Get the Hydrion pH test strip with range 5.5 - 8. I got mine from Amazon.

 

[yerrag]

I want to say that Google has failed us when it comes to looking for answers for health information. A simple question like "why do I urinate so much?" yields the same standard cookie-cutter answers that don't really apply to the one who makes the query. It makes the person wonder whether he is truly one of a kind, but the reality is that he isn't and that he should be finding answers that are relevant. He should be able to get all the possible answers, and then it's his job to winnow them down to what applies to his context.

The older Google gets, the more useless it becomes. It used to have more relevant answers, now it's just another high tech lying machine. From Do No Evil to Truth to the Highest Bidder. In a true machine learning environment, the machine is supposed to become more intelligent and give better answers over time. With Google, there's so much human manipulation and money and control behind the manipulation we should ditch Google if only we could find a good alternative. Silicon Valley has been taken over by the mind control elites.

Anyway, I had another experience recently of excessive urination. I finally fixed it, and so I can share this. Now, this is as accurate only as my reasoning goes, and it's okay to dispute the elements of my reasoning. It's a theory, but I based the theory from first-hand experience. There are people who don't agree with me that bacteria exist in our vasculature, and so they can dismiss what I'm saying for all I care.

When I started taking Serrapeptase to lyse arterial plaque (this includes plaque in arterioles and capillaries, even the tiny watershed capillaries), I began to notice over a period of one week a gradual increase in my urge to urinate. I would be urinating every 45 minutes during the day, and each time I went copious amounts of urine would come out. At night I would wake up so often I stopped counting. It got so bad I developed a cramp when sleeping. It makes sense as a lot of potassium was being excreted, and low potassium causes cramps. If I went further on this way, I would develop muscle weakness as well, as I would also become deficient in thiamine as thiamine is also excreted with so much urination. Needless to say, I stopped taking serrapeptase. FYI, I was taking 360,000 SPU per day of it and that was in retrospect an insane amount.

I took a CBC blood test and was shocked to see my wbc and neutrophil numbers shoot up. It was then that I figured out why I was urinating so much. A lot of bacteria was being released to the blood from the biofilm disrupted as plaque was being lysed. At any other time, these bacteria would just be in a state of dormancy or reduced activity, in an opportunistic waiting mode ready to pounce when the body's immunity should falter. In lysing plaque, I stirred the pot and bacteria was released. It was like stirring a beehive and getting all the bees excited. My innate immune system reacted in defense, and this resulted in a big jump in my wbc and neutrophils. Wbc went from 6.67 to 11.34 from a week prior, and neutrophils fro, 67% to 81%. I've never seen such numbers since I started tracking.

I don't know why this would result in a lot of urination, but I can now sorta understand why old people would urinate a lot. I think they have over time developed a bacterial population inside their blood vessels. These don't cause fever and don't trigger any alarm bells. So they are left there, and wait for the opportunity to strike. Hence the term opportunistic bacteria. When people are so immune-compromised as they near death, it's easy for them to develop sepsis, as these bacteria easily overpower the weakened immune system and sepsis results. I think that if you check the wbc and neutrophils of such people before they succumb to sepsis, these values would be high. They indiate a high degree of what's considered low level bacterial infection and inflammation.

I think that frequent urination that involves large quantities is just the body's way of excreting the by-products of our innate immune system fighting a large amount of bacteria.

 

[iPeat]

I was urinating about the same frequency as you. Experimenting with Progest-E alone has fixed it for me. I took 1/8th tsp (50mg of progesterone) before bed for a few nights in a row. Solved it. It wasn't without side effects, but even after stopping the Progest-E, the frequency hasn't returned.

 

[MOUNTAINBEAR]

I can urinate just once a day when I take tianeptine. I've got literally no explanation for it.