Urgency and Frequency at Work- Having Accidents
I am about thirty years old, and I work as an overnight watchman. While at work, I do not have the freedom to use the restroom immediately when I need to go, and must hold it. And to make mattes worse, since beginning this job, I have been experiencing increased frequency of the need to urinate and increased urgency as well; often I leak and have accidents. This became enough of a problem that I went to the doctor, thinking I may have U.T.I., but the test came back clean. I began to experiment with changes in my diet. Out of desperation I stopped drinking water while at work-this seemed to help, but I became dehydrated. I next cut out coffee-which I drink to help keep me awake- and was pleased to find that, when I did, my bladder was calm, and I did not struggle with urgency or leaks, and could drink water without a problem. However, my job requires that I stay awake and alert, and without coffee, or some source of caffeine, (I tried drinking energy drinks and they cause more problems than the coffee) I doze off, and cannot do my job.
Through trial and error, I have narrowed the source of my problem down to three triggers: 1) caffeine. 2) sleep deprivation: when I miss a day's sleep my bladder gets agitated) 3) Stress: my job is often quite tense, and when it is, my bladder is very temperamental. On my days off I can drink coffee, and, while, this does increase my need to urinate, because I am rested, relaxed, and have easy access to the restroom, it does not seem to be a problem. Is there a healthy way that I can strengthen my bladder in this situation?
First of all, if you are a man (you said "overnight watchman", but otherwise I wasn't sure), make sure that you get your prostate checked because incontinence in men can sometimes be a sign of a prostate problem.
Some people with urge incontinence find something called "bladder retraining" helpful. This technique helps in two ways: 1) It helps you to predict when you'll need to empty your bladder and beat it to the punch, and 2) It helps your bladder learn to hold itself just a bit longer.
To retrain your bladder, start trying to empty your bladder every hour on the hour (if you can't make it an hour, start at whatever is a comfortable length of time for you). Then, after a week or so of this, add about a half hour onto that time. So, during week two you urinate every 90 minutes. Then, continue adding about 30 minutes per week until you reach a lenght of time that is comfortable for you. I know it may be difficult to get away from work every hour to go to the bathroom, but perhaps if you know exactly what your bathroom schedule will be, you can find someone to confide in who can cover your post for a couple minutes each hour. You don't have to tell anyone that it's incontinence - just explain that you're having some urology issues and it would be helpful if you could run to the bathroom for just a minute each hour. And remember that after a number of weeks you'll hopefully have lengthened that time so that you're going less often.
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