How does fluid influence our bladder?
Is our bladder affected by different fluids or
how much or when we have it? What's your advice there?
So the bladder's quite a simple
filling and emptying system, what goes in at the top
is going to have a very direct impact of what comes
out of the bottom. We do use the fluid round the
body, and we do produce fluid from the body
but generally what goes in, will come out.
So if you're organised
about how it goes in the top, it will
come out in a more organised way.
We should be aiming to drink 1 and
a half to 2 litres of liquid
in a day. Now that's not water
on top of everything else that you've drunk, it's not
that you have to have a litre and a half of water on top of everything.
It's adding up all the different drinks you've had
should come to a litre and a half. And that can be tricky because
this is 250, this mug is
a quarter of a litre. So we're only talking 6-8
cups of tea, coffee or water.
And I think in our modern world, we are quite
prone to over-drinking without realising it.
Especially in your work environment when people are constantly bringing you
mugs of drink. Or if you've got into the habit
of always sipping from a bottle of water, it's
all about balance. It's really important to be hydrated,
we don't want dark yellow wee, we want nice
pale wee, but we don't want a
continual stream of liquid at the top because then we're going
to have a continual stream of weeing at the bottom.
So it's worth measuring your drinks for a day
and just making sure that you're staying in that one and a half
to two litres range.
And then not all liquid is the same.
It all comes out the tap the same, it all comes out the
kettle the same, but you want to just check that
what you're putting in your liquid
isn't annoying your bladder. The most common one
to annoy bladders is caffeine.
It's not that you can't have a coffee,
or a tea, but just notice whether
if you were to have plain water,
how soon would your bladder feel like it needed a wee
compared to if you have a coffee?
Now some people find that they can drink real coffee
and their bladder's fine, they can go for hours. But if they have
instant coffee, it's like 'need a wee
and I need a wee now'.
And other people are the other way around, instant coffee doesn't touch them,
but real coffee sends their bladder mad.
Tea can be irritating, especially
real builder's tea - if it leaves a stain in the mug,
then it might just be that there's too much tannin
and caffeine and that annoys your bladder, and you might be better
with a lighter tea.
Decaf coffee doesn't have as much
caffeine in it, but it does have some caffeine in it.
And green tea also has caffeine in it, so
though it's healthy, if you're not good with
caffeine, or your bladder's not good with caffeine,
you might find that green tea is also irritating for you.
The best thing to do is just simple experiments.
Try things, see what they do. Try without them, see what
happens. You don't want to give up something if it doesn't
actually have any effect on your bladder.
But how wonderful if it is something as simple as
you've become a bit intolerant to caffeine, you can cut it right back
and you might find your bladder is a whole heap better. And what about
soda, things like soda drinks, or
fruit juices?
Fruit juices, the concern more there is about sugars
and weight gain.
I don't think there's anything to particularly irritate the bladder.
With fizzy drinks, some people find the
fizz seems to irritate their bladder, they're not
sure why, but they think it might be something to do with the
carbonation process
that creates something different in the fluid that
creates an irritation to the bladder. So again you can try
the flat version versus the fizzy version.
With tins - cans of drink -
the only thing to watch out for there is that your average can is
330ml,
and most people are pretty full
by 250-300. So a can
of drink is slightly bigger
than a comfortable bladder.
So if you have a can of drink, your bladder's going to
fill and fill and fill and you might be just jolly uncomfortable
because it's a bit of an overstretch. Maybe just stop a bit short
on the can if that's you.