An “over sensitive” bladder can be a temporary reaction to drinking more liquid than you normally do in the day. However, if it ...

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How much water should you drink a day? | Urologist Debunks Health Myths

did you guys know that November is bladder health month well today I'm gonna be debunking the most common bladder myths including how much water do you really need to drink do you really need those eight glasses I'm Dr Rena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and if you're new here I make content every Monday and Friday so if you enjoy this video please make sure to subscribe so as a urologist and a pelvic surgeon who specifically sees people with urinary issues like bladder leakage a lot of people come in and they're drinking very little and the reason they're drinking very little is because they don't want to leak and so they're really saying well hey Doc if I drink less water I'm going to leak less and that's your myth number one drinking less water is going to make you leak less often in fact drinking too little water make sure you're in very concentrated so you might look in the toilet and see that the urine looks kind of dark in color like dark golden yellow and you're like hey I probably need to drink more well that concentrated urine can actually act like a bladder irritation what that means is that it it's the lining of the bladder if you want to learn more about what things irritate your bladder make sure you check out my very old video on bladder irritants but is still very relevant so as it becomes a bladder irritant that means that you may have the Sensation that you need to go more often or more frequently or more urgently like Gotta Go Gotta Go can't make it and sometimes that may lead to leakage but do you really need eight glasses of water a day well that's myth number two so while many people say that you need to have eight glasses of water a day that really means that you need to be having some form of fluids in that volume a day and we get a lot of our fluids in fact 20 percent of our fluids come from our food from the vegetables and the fruits they all have water in them as well so how do you keep track of how much you need to drink the thing is that our bodies can do an amazing job of regulating our fluids and it tells us when we need to drink by giving us signals that we are thirsty and so when you're you're thirsty you go ahead and grab a glass of water and you drink it and then your body tells you oh I'm not thirsty anymore and you don't need to drink anymore basically all the fluid in our bodies goes through our kidneys which are these little bean shaped organs that sit on the back and side of our bodies and they essentially sense all the fluid that's going through and it tells us how much salt is in our bodies if it's too salty it essentially sends signals to our brains to say hey get thirsty and drink more water and when there's too little salt in the body our body will say Hey you can just pee out more and you will regulate that system and make it equal so we're looking for the perfect kind of balance of salt and water in the body and so generally speaking your body doesn't decide that it's thirsty until you've lost about two percent of your body water and that's not a lot and it's very easy to make up by drinking fluids however of course this is for a generally healthy person if your doctor tells you you need to drink more fluids is because for example you've had a kidney transplant or you get kidney stones or you get recurrent urinary tract infections then you should do that there is some data to suggest that people perform better when they're well hydrated so people who are like flying planes or operating in surgery or Elite athletes should probably pre-hydrate before doing an activity to kind of get Peak Performance but you do want to be careful that you're not over hydrating in fact sometimes if you drink too much it can lower the salt in your body too much and cause something called hyponatremia which can make you very very sick so you don't want to over drink myth number three particularly for women is that leakage is normal as we age meaning that yeah it's normal to have a couple drops of urine leak out when you're coughing bending sneezing whatever and in fact that's not necessarily true incontinence or urinary leakage happens because there's abnormalities in the body whether it's muscular weakness or ligament weakness of pelvic floor which are the muscles that hold up our organs and often that happens in people who've had multiple pregnancies stand for long periods of time or are a bit overweight because of the weight on the pelvic floor or if it's because your bladder is having overactive contractions meaning it's squeezing and telling you you need to pee before your bladder is actually full both of those things are actually abnormal and we have lots of things that we can offer to help benefit those including medications non-medications minimally invasive procedures or just simple Lifestyle Changes I've made tons of videos on overactive bladder and stress urinary incontinence if you want to learn more make sure you check out those playlists the fourth myth is that you have to shower after sex to prevent urinary tract infections a lot of people say they do this a lot of people mention this but there is no evidence that showering after sex is going to prevent UTIs in fact if you're showering too much you can dry out the skin of your vulva and it can become irritated and dry and cause things like itching or make you even feel like you have a UTI so if you want to shower after sex by all means go ahead but if you don't want to you don't have to it's not necessarily going to prevent urinary tract infections and myth number five is that you get urinary tract infections because you're dirty and that's not true at all 100 it's not because you're wiping incorrectly most people know how to wipe themselves just fine and are not having any issues and that's not the reason a lot of people get sort of insecure when they come see me because they're like I'm getting recurrent UTIs but I'm very very clean in fact I tell people my recurrent UTI patients are probably the cleanest patients there are and so really the reasons you get UTIs can be many it can be because you have anatomic problems with the way your bladder empties or the way your kidney is empty it can be because you're having functional issues of the bladder and it's not squeezing correctly or it can be because you're going through menopause and your hormones have changed making it more likely that you you're going to get urinary tract infections all right well happy November bladder health month I hope that you guys learned something about your bladder and take it with you and use it on a regular basis drink when you're thirsty or if you're about to do something really intense have a glass of water before that to help improve your focus but otherwise drink when you're thirsty don't worry that you're dirty and see a doctor if you're having leakage because we can help you as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it [Music] thank you [Music]

Dr.

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