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NewsDay

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Teenagers and bedwetting

Opinion & Analysis
Bedwetting (also called nocturnal enuresis) happens when the bladder empties during sleep, it can happen once or more every night or just now and then.

Bedwetting (also called nocturnal enuresis) happens when the bladder empties during sleep, it can happen once or more every night or just now and then.

Some teenagers have never been dry at night and others start wetting after a period of being dry (secondary nocturnal enuresis). Bedwetting can be stressful, not only for teenagers, but for their families as well. The good news is there is help available and for most teenagers something can be done to resolve or manage bedwetting.

The World Wide Wet

By the time you’ve reached your teens you’ll probably have tried everything to stop bedwetting and nothing has worked. Most teenagers, who wet the bed, will have missed out on trips or staying at friends’ houses overnight and may have stopped talking to their parents about finding ways of resolving it.

Bedwetting is very common: it affects about one in 75 teenagers in the United Kingdom and there are thousands of teenagers worldwide, who wet the bed, but it doesn’t mean it’s easy to cope with or it can be resolved just like that. Many entirely normal, healthy, intelligent, mature teenagers wet the bed through no fault of their own.

Bladders behaving badly

At night, this is what should happen:

As you settle down to sleep, your brain releases a hormone (vasopressin) to tell the kidneys to slow down wee production overnight. This means your bladder usually doesn’t need to empty until morning. If your bladder does fill and need emptying during the night, it sends a signal to your brain to wake you up to go to the toilet.

But it doesn’t always happen like that:

Sometimes the kidneys don’t receive the message to slow down wee production and the signal to wake up doesn’t get through. Your bladder empties while you are asleep and you wet the bed.

Sometimes, bladders simply don’t behave very well and the bladder muscles squeeze before the bladder is full. When this happens at night, you may wake feeling the need to go to the toilet very urgently and won’t have time to get out of bed. Teens with this problem, known as an overactive bladder, will also usually need to go to the toilet urgently and very often in the day.

It’s known there’s a genetic link for bedwetting, so you may have inherited the tendency to wet at night just as you may have inherited your hair or eye colour. You may wish to check with your mum or dad if someone else in the family also wet at night.

Stress, tiredness and anxiety can trigger bedwetting.          — wikihow