Bladder Urgency All Day, Let’s Make it Go Away!

Are you peeing all day and never feel empty? You go to the bathroom but the urge doesn’t go away or it’s back in 15 minutes. The urge is so strong you feel like your bladder is going to explode but when you pee it’s just a trickle and would barely fill a shot glass. 

This is a very common concern that I help people resolve without meds all the time. These symptoms get blamed on overactive bladder but usually the bladder isn’t the problem at all. It’s the fascia and muscles around that bladder that are causing this urge. 

Overactive bladder can cause similar symptoms but in that case the bladder itself is irritable and so it randomly squeezes and gives you an urge or leaking throughout the day. The urge will resolve though and doesn’t hang around all day.  

When the pelvic floor muscles are involved they can mimic the feeling of a full bladder and trick your brain into sending you to the bathroom. That’s why you go and the amount of pee isn’t very much, the bladder wasn’t actually full. So you go to the bathroom, empty a tiny amount to get some relief but the urge is back by the time you’ve washed your hands and you don’t know if you should go pee again or try to ignore it. 

Instead of ignoring that urge and being frustrated and uncomfortable all day, what if we reduced the tension in the pelvic floor so that you get less urge? We could decrease that tension gradually until the muscles relax normally and don’t trick the brain into thinking your bladder is full. You’d be able to go about your day without worrying about where all the bathrooms are or making frequent frustrating trips to pee. 

That is exactly what we do to tackle this problem. We encourage pelvic floor relaxation through breathing exercises, awareness of the pelvic floor and manual (hands-on) techniques to improve mobility of the pelvic floor. Then we look outside of the pelvic floor to figure out what caused that tension in the first place. Is it hip weakness, back stiffness or core incoordination? Muscle weakness and stiffness around the pelvic floor can create tension on the pelvic floor by pulling directly on the muscles or indirectly through asking the pelvic floor to work harder to create stability and support of the trunk and hips. Fixing this root cause will build lifelong results and relief from urinary urgency and frequency and allow you to go to the bathroom on your own schedule!