If you were to draft a list of places where you’d ideally spend your time, your bathroom probably wouldn’t make the cut (let alone a gross public restroom). But if you deal with frequent urination, or the persistent need to pee, you might feel like your bladder is constantly dragging you to the nearest toilet anyway, leing you little say in the matter.
While being interrupted by the urge to pee at any point can be annoying, going up to eight times a day is considered normal. This works out to once every two to three hours, Alexis Griffin, MD, ob-gyn and urogynecology fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, tells SELF. Needing to relieve yourself more often than that (or waking up to pee more than once per night) is a sign that you’ve crossed into too-much-peeing territory.
The potential causes of a needy bladder are pretty wide-ranging. Yes, there’s a chance you’re just taking in too much water—but exactly how, when, and with what you’re filling your bladder can all play a role too, as can your bathroom habits.
On the more serious end, a variety of health problems can also lee you with extra fluid filling your bladder or just make you feel like you gotta go more often. The former can happen with conditions like heart failure and diabetes. Some medications, like diuretics (used to treat high blood pressure and prevent kidney stones, among other things), can also cause your body to create more urine. The persistent sensation of urgency more commonly occurs with issues right in or around your nether regions, like a urinary tract infection (UTI) or STI, interstitial cystitis (a.k.a. painful bladder syndrome, or inflammation of the bladder wall), or overactive bladder (OAB), which involves involuntary muscle spasms in this organ, Dr. Griffin says. (A neurologic issue like a spinal cord injury or multiple sclerosis can trigger those off-kilter contractions too, she adds.)
It’s also possible that a nearby mass, like a uterine fibroid or tumor, or even a full colon (a.k.a. constipation) or pregnancy, can put pressure on your bladder, giving you that incessant urge to go, she says. The same goes for an enlarged prostate in folks who he a penis. And finally, dysfunction of your pelvic floor can interfere with your flow and make it tough to fully empty your bladder, regularly sending you back to the bathroom soon after you’ve just gone, Riva Preil, PT, DPT, a board-certified pelvic floor physical therapist, author of The Inside Story: The Woman’s Guide to Lifelong Pelvic Health and founder of Revitalize Physical Therapy in New York, tells SELF.