It is November Bladder Health Month and in honor of that, I'm going to be talking about
the weird things that your bladder does that you probably don't know about. I'm Dr. Rena Malik,
Urologist and Pelvic Surgeon, and if you're new here we talk about bladder health,
urologic health, sexual health, and so much more. If you like what you see make sure
you subscribe and hit that notification bell so you don't miss my new videos every week.
first off you know your bladder can spasm what does that mean well you can have contractions of
your body when you're not ready for them those are typically called urge right you get an urge to go
and you can't delay the sudden strong desire and it's usually accompanied by a bladder contraction
or what we call a bladder spasm interestingly for some people when they spasm their bladder
they don't get an urge they actually get a pain at the tip of their penis so for men they'll get
a pain at the tip of their penis and for women sometimes they'll get a pain at the tip of their
clitoris or in their vaginal area and it can be pretty confusing because they're like i'm not
sure why i'm having this really weird pain that's kind of far away from my bladder and then they
come to see urologists and will often give them a medication that can help relax bladder spasms and
that pain will go away so in the same vein another weird thing that our bladders do is that they can
squeeze too hard or too little and what do i mean by that well if they squeeze too hard you get
what's called overactive bladder which means that these normal sensations that we all get that gotta
go gotta go sensation that happens to everybody becomes more and more common so you get a lot more
urgency and sometimes that can cause your bladder to squeeze before it's ready and have contractions
and that can sometimes cause you to have leakage and specifically this type of incontinence is
called urgency urinary incontinence it's leakage that occurs when your bladder squeezes before
you're ready for it to happen and causes leakage so leakage that's associated with a sudden desire
to rush the bathroom that you can't hold off and what about squeezing too little well in some
people because of neurologic injuries because they have held their bladder for many many years over
a long period of time because they have a large prostate or some other reason that's blocking
urine flow or if they have diseases like diabetes their bladder can get weak over time and what does
that mean well that can mean that when you're trying to empty your bladder the bladder just
doesn't squeeze as well as it used to when you're younger and that means that you'll squeeze urine
out and you'll feel like you're empty but it won't completely empty and so you may may or may not
know that some people will perceive that they feel like something's left inside others will just say
hey i have to go back pretty soon right afterwards so i feel like i didn't empty completely but
sometimes you won't know it at all and is this a problem well it really depends some people can
walk around with an incompletely emptied bladder without a problem at all other people will start
having a lot of frequency like need to go to the bathroom a lot during the day or waking up at
night and some people will start getting recurrent urinary tract infections or bladder infections
because that urine that sits around is like food for bacteria and bacteria come and eat
up all that food and cause you to have recurrent infections in your bladder and i know all of you
are probably wondering well how can i prevent it well if you have certain conditions like diabetes
make sure that you take very good control of your sugar and also don't hold your urine all
the time holding it once in a while is fine but if you hold it all the time for years and years
and years which we often see in people like nurses doctors teachers hairdressers truck drivers people
who just can't get to a bathroom because they're too busy taking care of somebody or something
they have a harder time getting to the bathroom and suddenly develop these kind of what we call
dysfunctional behaviors like they'll keep holding their bladder for hours and hours and hours
and their bladder gets used to holding that much but as it stretches out sometimes it can get
weaker and the squeeze of the bladder can get weak and some things are somewhat out of your
control you can't really do anything to decrease the growth of your prostate and you can't really
do anything to reverse certain neurologic problems at least not yet another interesting thing about
your bladder is for some people it can hold a lot and for some people it can hold a little
in fact when you look at data of people who have gotten their capacity or the amount of urine they
can hold in their bladder checked the average is about 12 to 14 ounces or 350 to 400 milliliters
but if you look at the whole spectrum of people it can range from anywhere from 110 ml which is
a little over three ounces to almost 700 ml which is well over 20 ounces so that's quite
a bit the next interesting thing or weird thing about your bladder is it's sensitive
so there are certain things that can really irritate or inflame your bladder
check out my video on bladder irritants where i go over this in a lot of detail but essentially
things like caffeine alcohol for some people spicy foods artificial sweeteners fruit juices or highly
acidic foods tomato based products those things can all irritate the bladder lining and make you
feel like you gotta go gotta go or maybe even make you feel like you have some discomfort in
the bladder itself also it's extremely sensitive to smoking so if you smoke you will notice that
you're probably having a little bit more often trips to the bathroom and smoking is a risk for
bladder cancer so if you are smoking this is the one thing that you could absolutely change to help
prevent you from getting something as dangerous as bladder cancer bladder cancer is not a fun disease
if you get bladder cancer having your bladder taken out is no small surgery it is a big major
life-changing surgery and it might require you having a bag on the outside where you urinate into
if you don't get your bladder taken out the other options for treatment are very time intensive you
have to come to the office get treatments inside your bladder and get lots of cystoscopies where
we look in the bladder routinely to check if there's any recurrence of bladder cancer it's
not a small thing so please quit smoking today the next interesting thing about the bladder is that
when your bladder fills if you can't empty your bladder for whatever reason whether it's because
you've developed a um a cause of urinary retention like having a large prostate in men
you've recently had surgery and you stopped being able to urinate you've had some neurologic injury
to the bladder or you've had long-standing diabetes as i mentioned and you can't empty
your bladder for long periods of time many many months the urine can then start backing up into
your kidneys called hydronephrosis and that's because if you look at the anatomy the kidneys
have these little tubes called the ureters that go down and connect into the bladder usually the
bladder is flexible like a balloon and so it fills and fills and fills and it can fill quite a bit
and it doesn't cause any increased pressure but in some cases the pressure just becomes too much
and that pressure either causes you to start leaking down below or it has to go up into
the kidneys if that happens you can have kidney failure which is also a very serious condition
so if you're having issues emptying your bladder make sure you see a urologist right away to make
sure that your kidneys are safe all right and the last thing is can you really burst your bladder
right if you drink a ton a ton of time and you're like oh my god my bladder is going to burst is it
really going to happen well the short answer is yes you can burst your bladder but it's extremely
rare there are very few cases of spontaneous bladder rupture usually because of underlying
infection having a recent surgery on your bladder or a couple cases have been reported in patients
who were cognitively impaired or not all there because they were drunk with alcohol consumption
or due to having previous radiation therapy on the bladder so if you're a normal healthy person
your body will normally kick in and you will end up having to go to the bathroom
and you won't be able to rupture your bladder that being said i wouldn't try to figure it out at home
drink normally go to the bathroom when you feel the urge and don't hold your urine
all right so in honor of bladder health month i hope you guys enjoyed this video please check
out a lot more information about bladder health month on the urology care foundation website i
will link it down below it's urologyhealth.org and they do a great job educating you on all
things about your bladder as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it