Should we hold our urine? When we need to pee, do we need to go right away? Holding it in will harm our kidneys? (Trang, 22 years old, Hanoi )
Reply:
The bladder functions as a reservoir for urine, expanding when full and collapsing when empty. A normal bladder in a healthy adult can hold 500 ml of urine.
However, a person usually feels the urge to urinate and urinates when the volume of urine in the bladder reaches 300-400 ml. On a normal day, with the normal amount of water we eat and drink, we urinate no more than 6-7 times, which means that normally every 3-4 hours we feel the urge to urinate and urinate once.
Doctors do not recommend that we urinate as soon as we feel the urge because it can create a bad habit of urinating too often, but they also do not recommend that we hold our urine too often.
Holding urine too much can cause urine to flow back through the ureter to the kidney, back into the renal tubules, over time causing chronic nephritis and possibly kidney failure.
Holding urine is an opportunity for bacteria to adhere to the bladder lining, grow and cause cystitis. Bacteria can even grow upstream to the kidneys causing acute pyelonephritis.
Therefore, holding urine excessively and frequently is a bad habit and can be harmful to the kidneys and urinary tract.
Doctor Nguyen Van Thanh
Department of Internal Medicine, Hanoi Medical University
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