Judy Foreman

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Is it normal for an adult to occasionally wet the bed?

November 21, 2005 by

Although bedwetting is fairly common in children, who usually grow out of it, it’s much less common in adults. That said, doctors from the Mayo Clinic estimated in a paper published nine years ago that as many as 1.5 to 3 percent of the adult population had “persistent nocturnal enuresis,” or chronic nighttime bedwetting..

An adult who wets the bed only occasionally and has no other voiding problems, is unlikely to have anything seriously wrong with the urinary tract, said Dr. Dianne Sacco, a urologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. Occasional bedwetting often occurs at a time of “excessive emotional stress,” she added. If the problem becomes persistent or the person has voiding problems during the day, too, it’s wise to see a doctor.

The potential causes of bedwetting, in kids and adults, are many. Some researchers think it’s a psychological problem. Others note that bedwetting runs in families, suggesting a genetic trigger.

Still others believe it’s caused by sleeping too deeply, especially in children, or by reduced bladder capacity, urinary tract infections, neurological abnormalities (in which nerves to the bladder fire too often) or a decrease in the secretion of so-called anti-diuretic hormone, which regulates the amount of urine made. In older adults, other conditions may also trigger bedwetting, including congestive heart failure and sleep apnea.

The sleep disorder hypothesis is particularly controversial. Shelly Morris, a former adult bedwetter who now runs the Enuresis Treatment Center of America in Cape Coral, FL, believes that some people sleep so deeply they can’t wake up to urinate. Her program uses moisture alarms that wake the sleeper (or family members) at the first drop of urine- in time to get to the bathroom.

But Dr. John Winkelman, medical director of the Sleep Health Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, doubted deep sleep was a common cause for adult bedwetting except when it was caused by medications because “excessively deep sleep is unusual for adults – adults usually have excessively light sleep.”

If you have a bedwetting problem, try training yourself to wake up with a bedwetting alarm, available on the net. You can also try drugs such as Tofranil, DDAVP or Ditropan, Detrol, Vesicare, Sanctura or Enablex. But bedwetting may recur if the drugs are stopped.

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