Health

Nocturia? What is this, and is it the reason why i am getting up to pee so much?

W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

February 3, 2025

BY W. GIFFORD- JONES MD & DIANA GIFFORD-JONES

Getting up often to pee at night is called “nocturia” and it’s a great sleep disturber as we age. Frequent peeing could also signal conditions that need medical attention. So, you shouldn’t ignore the problem.

It’s not polite to go around asking friends how many times they pee at night, but if you did, you’d discover it’s a common malady. Is there a natural remedy to decrease, or resolve the causes?

Of course, there are the obvious behavioural approaches. If you drink a lot of fluids before bed, unless you are young, you’ll undoubtedly wake up with the need to pee in the middle of the night. Load up on hydration earlier in the day. This is not to say don’t quench your thirst in the evening. Just do so in moderation and make a trip to the loo right before getting into bed.

If waking up to pee is still a problem, then alcohol, or caffeine consumption might be part of the issue. Try eliminating drinks containing either at least 4-6 hours before sleeping and see if there is an effect.

“Frequent peeing could also signal conditions that need medical attention.”

There are also other natural approaches to managing this challenge with the urinary system. As we age, every system in our body starts to struggle with wear and tear. The most feared problems tend to be the consequences of declining cardiovascular and neurological systems – in other words, coronary attacks, and various forms of dementia. Although the urinary bladder is not often the talk of the town, it too becomes weaker over time.

To fight that nightly curse of waking up to pee, it’s worth the effort to nurture the bladder the same way you do the heart, the brain, and every other important part of you. Give it the building blocks of healthy tissue formation so that the organ can operate effectively.

The bladder is like a balloon. It expands and contracts to accommodate the volume of urine. When empty, a normal bladder wall has a thickness of almost three millimetres and only half that thickness when full. With age, the elastic tissue may toughen and become less stretchy. This makes it harder for the bladder to hold as much urine, creating more frequent needs for visits to the bathroom.

Like the heart and arteries therefore, the bladder also depends on healthy cells forming healthy tissues. Among the most important ingredients are vitamin C and lysine in the high amounts required to fuel the body’s natural mechanisms for maintenance and defence, especially in light of all the toxins and junk our bodies receive daily, not to mention the aging process!

Our suggestion is 1,000 milligrams (mg) in the morning and another 1,000 mg at bedtime. If after a week no problems, such as diarrhea occur, try 1,000 in the morning and 2,000 mg at bedtime for another week. Then, again, if possible, increase to 1,000 mg in the morning and 3,000 mg at bedtime for several months. High vitamin C and lysine is safe, effective, increases immunity and decreases the risk of coronary attack and stroke.

You can and should talk with your doctor, but if there is no serious medical issue causing nocturia, then before trying pharmaceutical drugs, work on the natural properties of your body to take care of itself.

There’s no harm in trying, and significant gains if simple changes in behaviour and nutrition resolve the issue. We’d like to ask readers suffering from this problem who find success with this approach to nocturia to let us know.

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Written By W. Gifford-Jones MD & Diana Gifford-Jones

Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million. His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of nine books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and “90+ How I Got There!” Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. His foundation at that time donated $500,000 to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto Medical School. At 93 years of age he rappelled from the top of Toronto’s City Hall (30 stories) to raise funds for children with a life-threatening disease through the Make-a-Wish Foundation. Diana Gifford-Jones, the daughter of W. Gifford-Jones, MD, Diana has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy. Diana is Special Advisor with The Aga Khan University, which operates 2 quaternary care hospitals and numerous secondary hospitals, medical centres, pharmacies, and laboratories in South Asia and Africa. She worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the World Bank, including health policy and economics, nutrition, and population health. For over a decade at The Conference Board of Canada, she managed four health-related executive networks, including the Roundtable on Socio-Economic Determinants of Health, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, the Canadian Centre for Environmental Health, and the Centre for Health System Design and Management. Her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government included coursework at Harvard Medical School. She is also a graduate of Wellesley College. She has extensive experience with Canadian universities, including at Carleton University, where she was the Executive Director of the Global Academy. She lived and worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese fluently. Diana has the designation as a certified Chartered Director from The Directors College, a joint venture of The Conference Board of Canada and McMaster University. She has recently published a book on the natural health philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, called No Nonsense Health – Naturally!

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