Bladder training gets rids of bad habits and teaches your bladder good habits so you can get control over your bladder instead of the other way round.
What can bladder training do?
- Helps you control feelings of urgency
- Reduce episodes of urgency and urge urinary incontinence
- Increase the time interval between your toilet visits
- Increase your bladder capacity
Bad habits take many months or years to form and you will need time, commitment and patience to break these habits. You will have to learn – sometimes through trial and error – which messages your bladder is sending you are real (meaning your bladder is really full) versus the messages that are fake (meaning your bladder isn’t full but it is sending you a false signal to go).
Do I need to do anything before starting bladder training?
Visit a urogynaecologist, who is a gynaecologist specialising in female urinary disorders, to determine if bladder training is an appropriate treatment option for you and to exclude other causes of your urinary frequency e.g. other medical conditions, certain drugs, urinary tract infection (UTI) etc.
You should start a bladder diary before, during and after your training to keep track of your progress.
What are the steps of bladder training?
Overcome going to the toilet too often:
Foundation steps
- Drink 1.5 – 2.5 litre of fluids per 24 hours (7-8 cups) unless you have medical conditions (e.g. heart/kidney failure etc) that do not allow you to do so
- Drink at regular intervals (1 cup every 2-3 hourly)
- Pass urine at regular intervals (every 2-3 hourly) – do not hold your bladder excessively
- Restrict coffee and tea to 1 cup/day, preferably in the morning
- Restrict alcoholic drinks to maximum 1 glass/day
- Reduce sugar, salt, preservatives in your diet
Building steps
- Set your target 15 minutes beyond your usual interval e.g. if you are going to the toilet every hourly, set it at 1 hour 15 minutes
- Once you can do that 3 or 4 days in a row, slowly increase the time again
- Do not increase the interval to beyond 2-3 hourly
- Cut down on social visits to the toilet e.g. going just before you leave the house, going because your friends are going too
Overcome feelings of urgency and urge urinary incontinence:
- Sit down on a firm surface and cross your legs
- Stay still
- Tighten your pelvic floor muscles as hard as you can. You can either tighten them and hold for as long as you can until the urgent feeling goes away/ gets better, OR tighten and let go as hard and as quickly as you can for several times in a row
- Distract your mind, either by counting out loud or even scrolling through your phone
Your bladder will have good and bad days – very much like a child learning – do NOT give up! Remember that this will take time. Once you have trained your bladder successfully, you need to continue with the good habits learned!
