If you’re making numerous trips to the bathroom during the night, it could be an indication that something isn’t quite right. Frequent nighttime visits to the toilet might serve as a warning sign of heart disease. You know, like when a man heads to the toilet. (Credit / Shutterstock) It’s not merely due to consuming an excessive amount of water before going to bed. Recent research reveals that these bothersome nocturnal awakenings might be linked to high blood pressure and even heart failure.
Ideally, we ought to be able to enjoy six to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep each night. However, if you keep waking up to urinate, it disrupts your sleep cycle. This can leave you feeling fatigued during the day, make it difficult to think clearly, put you in a foul mood, and increase your susceptibility to illness.
Nocturia is a condition characterized by waking up in the middle of the night to urinate. It’s often the most troublesome urinary symptom. And it affects a significant number of people in the US. According to the Cleveland Clinic, it’s one of the most common disorders, with around 50 million individuals affected.
For adults over 50, more than 50% experience nocturia. And it’s more prevalent in men after the age of 50. Before 50, it’s more common in women.
There are several factors that might cause you to wake up at night to use the bathroom. It could be because you consumed a large quantity of fluids before bed, had alcohol or caffeine in the evening, have a small bladder capacity, suffer from high blood pressure, have diabetes (either Type 1 or Type 2), are pregnant, have fluid retention in your body, have sleep apnea, or have benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) if you’re a man. Or it could be due to certain medications you’re taking.
If nocturia is a recurring issue, it’s worthwhile to determine the underlying cause. In fact, recent research has uncovered a connection between heart failure and an overactive bladder.
At first glance, your heart and your bladder may not seem related, but your body is an interconnected system, and they are indeed linked. The study author, Dr Satoshi Konno from the Division of Hypertension at Tohoku Rosai Hospital in Sendai, Japan, stated that if you need to urinate at night (nocturia), you might have high blood pressure and/or an excessive amount of fluid in your body. They discovered that waking up at night to pee is associated with a 40% higher likelihood of having hypertension. Moreover, the more frequently you visit the toilet, the greater the risk of hypertension.