The need to pee at night (nocturia) -- which affects most people over the age of 60 -- is related to the amount of salt in your diet, according to new research presented at the European Society of Urology congress in London.
Most people over the age of 60 (and a substantial minority under 60) wake up one or more times during the night to go to the bathroom. This is nightime peeing, or nocturia. Although it seems a simple problem, the lack of sleep can lead to other problems such as stress, irritability or tiredness, and so can have a significant negative impact on quality of life. There are several possible causes of nocturia. Now a group of Japanese scientists have discovered that reducing the amount of salt in one's diet can significantly reduce excessive peeing -- both during the day and when asleep.
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223 members of the group were able to reduce their salt intake from 10.7 gm per day to 8.0 gm/day. In this group, the average night-time frequency of urination dropped from 2.3 times/night to 1.4 times. In contrast, 98 subjects increased their average salt intake from 9.6 gm/night to 11.0 gm/night, and they found that the need to urinate increased from 2.3 times/night to 2.7 times/night. The researchers also found that daytime urination was reduced when salt in the diet was reduced.
There's a slightly longer summary here: Cutting salt could cut night-time loo visits; and some mainsteam media have also covered the story in a more readable form: Could eating less salt reduce nighttime bathroom trips?. And for balance, some people on the internet think the opposite is true.
[Update: Replaced ScienceDaily link with a link to original source article. --martyb]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:09PM (2 children)
I go pee, take my son to the toilet, then i go pee again.
Usually good to go for the night, but i also do Kiegel exercises (or whatever they are called): start peeing, stop the flow, hold it, let it go again. Rinse, repeat. (Oh, i just vomited into my mouth)
Anything else you'd like to know Officer?
Aside:
I'd like to know how to stop dreaming all night long and having the alarm wake me in the middle of a dream: REALLY fecks you up. Tired, tired, tired!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28 2017, @01:21PM
Simple: Don't set an alarm.
Sure, you might lose your job for not getting there on time, but then, that gives you even more opportunity to sleep until you wake up naturally. Just make sure that you have enough money on the bank to afford that.
How to get the money? Well, you just have to guess the right numbers on the lottery. ;-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29 2017, @03:59AM
Hey Gaaark! There are sleep apps for exactly this. They mostly monitor breathing and movement, and those correlate very strongly to phases of sleep. The apps all (afaik) have "wake at the earliest shallow sleep stage after X time, or by Y time at the latest." They pretty much work but can be confounded by cosleepers, though cosleepers teeeeend to synch phases.
Now, I'm an AC. Guess how much I want my cell phone watching me sleep, listening to me breathe and dream?
But one can get a crappo burner phone, load the sleep monitoring app, and desolder the radios on it.
xyzzy