subject: Awakening To Urinate Disturbs Sleep Patterns [print this page] Awakening To Urinate Disturbs Sleep Patterns
At the very least, sleep is interrupted and at the worst, one cannot get back to sleep-which leads to sleep deprivation fast. The problem with this interruption of the sleep cycle has to do with the body's healing cycle. Stage IV Delta sleep is the deep stage of the REM cycle; that's where the body restores itself.
If that stage is not reached-or is interrupted-healing cannot occur properly. There are some people who never sleep; the diagnosis for those people is fatal...the body cannot go on without repair. That genetic mutation dooms the family members to a certain death (don't worry, it's extremely rare).
When one can sleep, having to get up to urinate one or more times during the night is a major annoyance. There are several things that cause that to happen, the most common being the drinking of fluids before bed. When reclined, the blood flow to the kidneys is increased, which means more urine is created. If a large amount of fluid is imbibed before bed and before the kidneys have time to filter that fluid, the bladder will certainly let the body know when it gets full. For very sound sleepers the signal may be missed-resulting in bed-wetting.
For most of us the signal is pretty demanding, waking us out of a sound sleep to stumble to the bathroom. Some even have the need to pee as part of the dream; it gets more insistent as the need becomes stronger. The only problem with that is if the person finds a toilet in the dream and lets loose...only to discover that they haven't actually made it to the toilet. Yow.
Other things that cause one to run for the toilet in the night have to do with either bladder infections, neurogenic bladder or prostate problems.
