What exactly is the normal amount of time you should go to
the bathroom to urinate. Well, I'm doctor Rena Malik urologist
and pelvic surgeon, and I'm going to tell you exactly what
is considered normal. So I talk about this a lot on my channel
about urinary frequency or need to go to the bathroom more
often than usual and what we define in urology as normal is
less than eight times a day, but what if you actually looked
at all the people of different races. Men and women and so how
many times do people actually go well, let's dive into it.
So this first they looked at over 4000 women and they asked
them how often do you need to empty your bladder during
waking hours and they looked at the responses and they
categorize them into groups. They looked at people who went
more than 6 hours between going to the bathroom, and that was
only 6% of people between five and 6 hours. That was about 16%
of people. and if you look at between three to 4 hours, that
was the large majority of 51% between one to 2 hours was
about 23% and that's quite often if you think about it
every one to 2 hours while you're awake, that could be you
know up to twelve times, sixteen times a day. If you are going
every hour and 3% went more than every hour. So when you
assume a 16 hour a day and you assume the average person is
going between three and 4 hours a day, probably most people go
somewhere between five and six times a day. But let's look at
this based on gender because that study only looked at men
and women. Another study matched men and women.
Participants who had no urinary symptoms. I mean they're
walking around feeling like I don't really have a problem
with my bladder. So these are people that presumably have
normal bladder function. This is kind of interesting when you
look at the adult population that they recruited it was not
reflective of the general population in the United
States. More than half of the population was black. 30% was
white and less than 7% were Asian or Hispanic. They looked
at this group and they compared a number of characteristics
between men and women, and the first thing that you'll see on
this chart is that men voided seven times on average in 24
hours, whereas women went to the bathroom about eight times.
You can also see a difference in the void volume, and that
means how much exactly are you peeing So you can see the
average amount that someone pees when they urinate in women
was about 205 ounces and so that's a little bit less than
seven ounces. And when you look at men they had about 230 MLS,
which is about eight ounces, so there are men are avoiding less
often. And voiding larger volumes when they do go to the
bathroom so you could see this graph and this is kind of an
older looking graph because it's an older paper, but they
looked at how many voids people had in 24 hours and you can see
the difference between men who are in black and women who are
in white on this graph. Here. men are going most often six
times a day whereas women you can see are more often going
seven to eight times in 24 hours, and this includes the
night time waking up at night. Interestingly, It counts it
up to twenty-one times in 24 hours. I mean that's a lot of
urination. So yes, some people do urinate that frequently is
that considered normal. No. so why does this matter? Well? A
lot of people come to see me and they may not know that they
are urinating a lot or they think they're urinating a lot
or they think they're urinating a normal amount. So one example
would be someone who comes in who's having problems with
urination and they're only going to the bathroom twice a
day. And so I tell these people if you're having a lot of
Urgency, Frequency, you need to go to the bathroom often, and
it's probably because your bladder is holding a ton of
fluid and it's really eager to have you empty it and it's
going to happen to a lot of people who are maybe holding
their urine or work. so people like me who are doctors, nurses
people who are on their feet, a lot all day and taking care of
people like hairdressers. They find that they don't have a lot
of time to go to the bathroom and so their bladder gets used
to holding lots and lots of fluid and you have to retrain
it and go more often on a schedule so that you cannot.
Have this urgency frequency sensation all the time so and
the other flip of the coin is when somebody was going four
times a day or didn't really notice how often they were
going and now they're going seven times a day and yes,
that's totally a reasonable reason to come see the doctor
if you're bothered by it, but it's not a reason to worry
because it's all within normal. If you're urinating more than
seven to eight times a day, I suggest you talk to your
primary doctor about it or see a urologist if you're bothered
by it. if you're not bothered and you're drinking a lot of
fluids and that's why you're going to the bathroom. You're
okay. That's probably why you're urinating a lot.
Alright. I hope this was helpful. Thank you so much for
watching as always remember to take care of yourself because
you're worth it.