Can holding your bladder harm you?

Answer 1

Hi Brittany

It not good to practice this method, but there are times everyone is "caught short" so we do. If you are at home and have to go, please do. Some doctors will say by holding your bladder you strengthen it, but some doctors believe when nature calls you should run for it. LOL

I'm very glad to see somebody else besides me of this opinion: it's true; research shows that holding back from urinating can do at least two harmful things: one, it can strongly predispose you to urinary tract infections, or UTIs, which can in fact damage your kidneys. Two, it can weaken the muscle of the bladder, the detrusor, so that when you void your bladder you will no longer be able to empty it all the way. Holding your bladder regularly actually weakens the detrusor muscle; it does not strengthen it, ever.

The muscles it does strengthen are your pelvic floor muscles, but you can strengthen those without holding urine by doing "Kegels," where you flex the muscles you'd use to stop the flow of urine (the pelvic floor muscles) and then release them.

But by all means, don't do what I have done and am ashamed of doing, especially given my calling in life: I have been known to be up to 38 hours without urinating while mostly working at the Homestead where I live! INSANE! I had so many kidney infections that I required medical intervention, and sometimes my bladder became paralyzed and I had to be catheterized.

I am an extreme example by far, but there many like me: people with Avoidant Parauresis, the condition responsible for compulsive, OCD-driven holding behavior. Usually called "Shy Bladder Syndrome," it often results from trauma, and in my case the trauma was early and extreme to the point it nearly killed me. The people responsible ought to have gone to prison, but they didn't.

Most "holders" are not as damaged as I; I only gave my case as an extreme example. But some people far, far worse than I actually post videos of themselves on YouTube showing their horribly distended bladders - so much so that they are actually clearly visible through the layers of skin and subcutaneous fat. Such people seem oblivious of the fact they can kill themselves. I don't know how kidney transplant patients must feel when they see such things.

Avoidant Parauresis is treatable. I am in therapy (actually for PTSD) and my other local friends who have the condition mostly are as well, I'm glad to report.

And most folks only "hold it" now & then if a lavatory is unavailable. But if you find yourself doing it a lot of the time, and your Gyno keeps asking you (as mine did!) why you have a UTI every time you see her, then please, find help.

There is now a society for Avoidant Parauresis online; in my youth, as I desperately searched for help, there were no such things! I'm glad there are now. Good luck.

Answer 2

Yes. Everytime you hold your bladder, you are letting your bladder drown.