Bladder Retraining

People with problems of urgency and frequency often find that they get caught in a vicious cycle. It is natural to worry if you feel that your bladder might let you down. You therefore become over-sensitive to feelings of bladder fullness and tend to rush off to the lavatory at the first sensation of needing to go. The bladder becomes accustomed to holding smaller and smaller volumes of urine and sends signals that it is full, earlier and earlier. The more often you go, the more you need to go. Some unfortunate people end up feeling that the bladder needs emptying several times every hour; each time, the person goes to the bathroom ‘just in case’. Worrying and rushing make urgency worse. The purpose of bladder retraining is to increase the bladder capacity for holding on to urine, and for you to gain confidence that your bladder can behave, so that a more normal pattern is achieved, without urgency or incontinence.