Toilet every hour during night

[Cassandra]

Since menopause my sleep pattern has been dreadful but now each night I’m up every hour to go to the bathroom - I’m going to have a hip replacement shortly and don’t know how I’m going to manage - I’m exhausted each morning and maybe I could sleep a little longer if no bladder issues. I don’t drink much tea through the day and my last drink is at 6 pm. Any advice would be much appreciated.

[Shoeysmum]

I used to be the same, well not up every hour during the night but 3 or 4 times which was exhausting enough so I can well understand your exhaustion.

At the time I was attending a gym (gave it up after I was diagnosed with UC) and made myself drink 500 ml of water when I was there. I noticed that on those days I might only wake up once during the night for a visit to the loo. Then the penny dropped - my urine was too concentrated and this causes irritation to the bladder. The answer is to increase your liquid intake during the day. It can be tea, not so much coffee but any other form of water, i.e. squash or just water.

Once I increased my water intake the nightly visits to the loo reduced considerably; sometimes I never wake up to go to the loo at all.

The science is there if you google it, in other words don't just take my word for it.

By the way, don't stop drinking at 6 pm. My last drink of water is immediately before bedtime. If you're at all worried that this will wake you up during the night then try to increase your intake during the morning initially. Yes, you'll pee for England (or wherever you are) initially but this will calm down...trust me and good luck.

[Millbrook]

I think it’s important to see your GP to check if there are any underlying conditions. Once you have excluded these you can try the following:-

1. Pumpkin seed extract

2. Rejoice Plus

3. Melatonin

I can understand how exhausted you are. My husband used to wake up 6-8 times and melatonin helped a lot. I slowly increased his dose to about 8 mg and on good nights he woke up twice. You have to adjust your dose to the point that you have good sleep and no active dreams or drowsy ness the next day. There are many posts on nocturia and what has helped others.