So this week, I have had a lot of deadlines and so I've been super
stressed but you know what else I found is that I've been going to the bathroom
a ton! Have you guys ever noticed this that when you're super stressed or
anxious that you're rushing to the bathroom all the time?
Well, I'm Dr. Rena Malik, Urologist and Pelvic Surgeon and I'm going to share
with you exactly why this happens and if you stick around to the end I'll
also give you some advice on how to fix this problem if you're having it. If you
like what you see here make sure you subscribe and share this video with some
of your friends
So a lot of articles will quote the flight or fight response as being
responsible for this problem, so what is fight or flight? That's when you
encounter something that makes you scared, nervous, or makes
you want to run away, you know they give an example of like
when you're in the wild and you see a tiger you need to have your entire body
ready to run and so your entire body focuses
on getting blood flow to the areas that need it during that time
and part of that cascade is a release of a bunch of hormones and these
hormones override the normal functional hormones that keep your bladder relaxed
and so what happens is the sphincter which holds your urine
intact relaxes and your bladder squeezes giving you the urge to urinate and some
people will even wet their pants like you'll see in some
movie scenes. So another thing that we have found that
might explain why this happens is in animal studies and what they found
was they took rats that were exposed to chronic stress
situations and they actually measured the sensitivity of their bladder and
what they found was that these rats had a lower
threshold at which they perceived things as painful or
uncomfortable compared to other rats. They also felt
those sensations more intensely when they felt
them and so this is known as a phenomenon
called stress-induced hyperalgesia which may explain why when we have chronic
stress we actually feel normal sensations like
needing to go to the bathroom as uncomfortable or bothersome making us
want to go to the bathroom more quickly so that we can relieve ourselves
of that uncomfortable sensation.
Other studies have looked at certain neurotransmitters and neurotransmitters
are chemical messengers that are released by nerve cells to
other organs in the body to relay a certain message
and we found that in stressful situations,
the brain releases more corticotropin releasing factor or
CRF. cotropin releasing factor is actually released by the brain during
times of stress or anxiety. The bladder interestingly has
receptors on it that respond to this specific
neurotransmitter or CRF and this neurotransmitter acts on the
bladder by increasing bladder contractions
and bladder contractions are the reason that you feel the urge to urinate
so you get more bladder contractions more urgency making you need to go to
the bathroom more often another neurotransmitter called
serotonin which acts on blood vessels and pain pathways in the brain
is one that is correlated with stress and urinary symptoms
so what does it exactly do well it's responsible for controlling mood
attention sleep and pain and when you have chronic stress that actually
reduces your serotonin levels and a reduction of serotonin levels has
been found to be associated with more bladder contractions and subsequent
urinary urgency and frequency so another cause of this is pelvic floor
dysfunction so you can think about when you're
stressed or anxious things clench up right people get
pain in their jaw they also can have the muscles of the pelvic floor
tense up and when the muscles of the pelvic floor tense up they can cause a
number of symptoms and one of these can be urinary symptoms it can be an
increase in urinary urgency and urinary frequency and sometimes even pain in the
bladder because of this pelvic floor dysfunction
it can also incidentally cause issues with bowel symptoms as well as pain with
intercourse so if you're finding that when you're
stressed you're having a lot of abnormalities including bowel function
abnormalities and urinary problems it may be that you have pelvic floor
dysfunction now i want to share with you guys a
study that i read about overactive bladder and anxiety so how
are they linked well this study looked at patients who had
overactive bladder and matched them with age-matched controls who didn't have
overactive bladder they had all of them take a specific
questionnaire that measured anxiety and what did they
find well nearly half of the people who had overactive bladder
had anxiety as well and the people with overactive bladder had actually higher
rates of anxiety or more severe anxiety symptoms and conversely those who had
anxiety had really more bothersome overactive
bladder symptoms so what does that mean does that mean
overactive bladder and anxiety cause one another well we don't know but we do
know the relationship is very very strong
and why do we know this well one we know that when controlling for a number of
factors they're very highly correlated number two we know
that when you have worse anxiety or worse overactive
bladder symptoms they exacerbate the other we also know
there's a temporal relationship so we know that people who get overactive
bladder have a higher likelihood of developing
anxiety in the next 10 years similarly we know the opposite so people
have anxiety they do have a chance of developing overactive bladder over the
next 10 years improving these overactive bladder
symptoms can actually help improve anxiety symptoms as well
and vice versa what can you do so first and foremost you can absolutely see your
primary care provider or a urologist to see if you truly have
overactive bladder or pelvic floor dysfunction and might be helped
with treatment for those conditions another thing you can try is
bladder training so what exactly is that well when you have the urge to urinate
you will see the urge comes up really really high and that's when we run to
the bathroom but if you wait that urge will actually come
down very slowly so what can you do we call this bladder training when you get
the urge to urinate you wait and you distract yourself and
you do quick kegel exercises and someone
actually asked on my channel what is that so very briefly that is the
sensation of pulling up and in in your pelvis or your vagina
and then relaxing so doing quick contractions and relaxing
and waiting for the urge to pass and then calmly walking to the bathroom
after the urge has passed this causes your brain and bladder to
get reconnected so that they don't sense that urge
so strongly anymore also you can do things that help reduce your stress
this might be making sure that you get to bed on time and get a good amount of
sleep for your body that has been shown time and time again to help reduce
stress and anxiety also making sure that you get some daily
exercise even if that's going on a walk can be
very beneficial to your health and your mood
and being outside in nature has been shown to improve
mood levels and can help reduce stress and anxiety also incorporating some
mindfulness in your daily routine can help you really get through some of this
anxiety last but not least get help for your
anxiety there is no shame in getting help
for anxiety or stress or depression or any mental health
problem as you know world mental health day passed a couple weeks ago
and it is really really important i encourage all of you to get help if you
are suffering with stress or anxiety in your life
so if you enjoyed all the content in this video make sure you check out my
overactive bladder playlist where i talk about
how to manage your overactive bladder with five easy steps
as well as what are bladder irritants and what medications
are for overactive bladder thanks so much for watching and always remember to
take care of yourself because you're worth it