Drinking 225 ml of liquid then go to bed, -> to how many/much urine?

February 22, 2023 4:29 PM

If a person is in good health, (doesn't have diabetes etc.) what is the frequency of urination, times the amount of urine that drinking 225 ml of liquid just before going to bed, would lead to? And does it make a difference what the liquid is, other than coffee and alcohol which are mentioned on the list in the articles I read. It doesn't mention caffeinated coffee or not. The articles I read all say 2 or more is too much see your doctor. Does it mean even if if you drink as much as possible, you should only urinate once per night? That doesn't work in my head. And does it make a difference whether a person is lying down or not? The articles don't mention anything about those things.
posted by amfgf to Health & Fitness (26 answers total)

Response by poster: I hope it’s alright to use this space to add detail. Does the size of the person make a difference? If so, what in what way? What other things are there to consider?
posted by amfgf at 4:43 PM on February 22, 2023

Best answer: Bodies are all different. No guideline is perfect. This '2 or more' guideline is not a magic number that applies in all situations. If you love to guzzle liquid right before bed, yeah, you're going to pee more than the average person.

But one guideline applies no matter what your habits: if you're worried that you're peeing to much or too little, ask a doctor to check you out. They can look at kidney function and other blood markers and give you a much more accurate idea of your health than counting pee trips ever will
posted by Ausamor at 4:52 PM on February 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

Best answer: I don't know what makes the difference, but sometimes I will drink a ton of water if I want to be sure I will wake up first thing in the morning. Other times, I won't drink water before bed because I know it means I might have to wake up in the middle of the night.

Antidiuretic hormone is why most people don't typically have to go pee in the middle of the night.
posted by aniola at 4:53 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Another factor has to do with your sleep cycle. Many people, especially as they get older, actually wake up a little at the lightest stage of sleep and then slide back into sleep again. For these folks, it might not be the need to urinate that wakes them but rather once they are a little awake, they notice their full bladder and once noticed feel the need to do something about it.
posted by metahawk at 4:56 PM on February 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I can drink that amount of water right before going to bed and won’t have to wake up to pee. In fact I normally drink just under a pint of water before I go to sleep. I am probably jinxing it and will have to start to get up regularly from now on…
posted by koahiatamadl at 4:58 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: also, sleep apnea or other sleep disorders can cause frequent urination at night
posted by bitterkitten at 5:14 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I drink 12oz of water before bed every night, with few exceptions. Sometimes I don't wake up at all and sometimes I wake up 2 or 3 times and pee every time. It just depends on how well I'm sleeping, really; nothing to do with how much water I had.
posted by potrzebie at 5:19 PM on February 22, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: You're overcomplicating things in thinking there's a one-size-fits-all answer to any of this. Go to bed after a 500ml+ drink, and if you're me aged 25, you'll sleep 8 or 9 hours with no need to pee. If you're me aged 50, you'll wake up after 4 or 5 hours, go for a pee, and sleep another 4. Age, sex, weight, caffeine intake - lots of things will affect how often you need to empty your bladder. Short answer: humans are too variable for this to be a useful question.
posted by pipeski at 5:30 PM on February 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

The human body isn’t standardized to the ml level. If you find yourself waking to pee in the night, then reduce your liquid intake before bedtime. If it continues and you think something is wrong, discuss it with your doctor.

No one on the internet is going to be able to give you exact numbers and specific consequences because they don’t exist.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 5:32 PM on February 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

Best answer: There are a lot of things that can change how often you need to pee. If you pee frequently during the day you may not be holding it as long as you could. Sometimes you can train your bladder to hold more liquid over night by holding it longer during the day. People who drink massive quantities of liquid during the day can often develop a great capacity to hold their pee, which carries over to night time.

Sometimes you can have other organs putting pressure on your bladder so that it feels the strain of being full. Being constipated can lead to needing to pee more often.

Sometimes a minor urinary tract infection can lead to wanting to pee more often including at night.

There are just so many variables.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:56 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Regular urine colour is pale yellow. If your urine is dark yellow, you are either not drinking enough water, or have some other issue that you should probably go to the doctor to get checked out. (Caveat: if you are taking B-complex vitamins, and your urine is an intense bright yellow, you are just pissing out the extra B vitamins and you should take less B vitamins.)

If you are peeing many times a day and your urine is very pale and you are drinking a lot because you feel very thirsty, you should see a doctor because that is a potential sign of diabetes.

If you have gastroesophageal reflux issues, drinking liquid just before you lie down can be a problem (instead, drink an hour before bed so that the liquid can empty out of your stomach before you get horizontal).

I assume that waking up to pee multiple times during the night is a concern because it means you're not getting good enough sleep (possibly caused by an underlying health problem), and/or something is wrong with your kidneys or urinary tract. "Per night" means during the period when you're asleep. If you are not lying down but are still asleep, yes it counts. If you are awake all night, I would expect that you'd be peeing on a more frequent schedule because your kidneys don't dial themselves back since you're not asleep (see aniola's comment about vasopressin).
posted by heatherlogan at 7:25 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: The articles I read all say 2 or more is too much see your doctor.

Could you clarify with some examples of where you're seeing that kind of consensus? It might well be possible to help you find less dogmatic, more trustworthy sources of health information than those you're currently relying on and/or worried by.
posted by flabdablet at 8:18 PM on February 22, 2023

Best answer: As others have said, there are far too many variables for there ever to be a standard answer to this question.

I'll add another one to the mix: humidity. We all exhale water vapor when we sleep, which dehydrates us to some extent. If the air in your bedroom is particularly dry on a particular night, it will absorb more water vapor out of your lungs. If it's more humid, it will absorb less.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 8:20 PM on February 22, 2023

Best answer: I don't wake up to pee as a general rule. I occasionally won't fall asleep because I need to, but generally it isn't something that wakes me up. I have been like this since about six months old according to my mother, and my child is the same. Humans have an amazing amount of variety.
posted by geek anachronism at 9:03 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Also, how much is this person sweating?

Because water doesn't just go straight to the bladder: in hot weather, you can lose A LOT of water to sweat.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 9:23 PM on February 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: One of the wisest things about health I ever heard was that sometimes, "normal" doesn't refer to people in general; sometimes it refers to "normal for you." What this means is - sometimes it's "normal" for one person to pee twice in the middle of the night, because that's just how they're wired; but it's "normal" for another person not to, because that's how THEY'RE wired. But if the person who usually doesn't pee in the middle of the night suddenly starts needing to get up and pee twice or three times, even though they haven't been doing anything different, THAT'S what gets doctors interested - because getting up twice to pee isn't what they usually do.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:28 AM on February 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: If you eat enough fiber, and not too much processed foods fiber will help you hold your pee at night. It acts like a sponge (think of celery after you've chewed for a while) and holds the liquid.
posted by aniola at 6:07 AM on February 23, 2023 [2 favorites]

I recently read the excellent Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor and there's a huge section on why you should be breathing through your nose rather than your mouth when you sleep. Something he pointed out (I don't remember the science behind it) was that if you breathe through your mouth when you sleep, you'll wake up to pee more often than if you breathe through your nose. I've been paying attention to my breathing a lot more in the last month or so since reading this and have noticed that, even with drinking the same amount of liquids at the same times during the day, I now only get up about once a week in the middle of the night to pee rather than most nights. (Mouth taping while sleeping is also a thing which I've tried in order to breathe through my nose.)
posted by jabes at 6:34 AM on February 23, 2023

Best answer: When women go through menopause and lose estrogen, the urinary muscles get weaker. Pelvic floor exercises might help some. In any case, this is a strong factor for post-menopausal women.

Even mild constipation can cause/ exacerbate urinary incontinence. Eating lots more fiber is a big help.

Bladder capacity and control varies quite a bit. In addition, the brain has trigger signals. When I pull in to my driveway, I often need to pee right now. My brain does not care that I have to manage the dog, groceries, whatever. Good times.
posted by Mom at 8:03 AM on February 23, 2023

Some spicy foods and artificial dyes are bladder irritants.
posted by theora55 at 8:04 AM on February 23, 2023

Response by poster: Thank you everyone.

Here is an example of websites I looked at.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/search/search-results?q=frequency%20of%20urination
https://www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/frequent-urination/basics/causes/sym-20050712
Immediately it jumps to ...
And another site ( I'm trying to find it) said something about happiness. If you're happy with it it's ok. And if it doesn't interfere with your daily life it's ok.
posted by amfgf at 1:36 PM on February 25, 2023

Response by poster: I didn't use the link thing above.

posted by amfgf at 1:40 PM on February 25, 2023

Response by poster: Ok, I used it but it didn't work.
Let me try again.
posted by amfgf at 1:42 PM on February 25, 2023

The Mayo Clinic is generally a good source for reliable medical information, but it needs to be read with care. For example, I can't see anything like "2 or more is too much see your doctor" in the linked Mayo Clinic pages.

Mayo's definition page for frequent urination says

Frequent urination is the need to urinate more often than what's normal for you. You may be passing more urine than usual or only small amounts.

Frequent urination may occur both day and night, or it may be noticeable only during the night (nocturia).

Frequent urination can affect your sleep, work and general well-being.

Their advice on when to see your doctor also makes no mention of "2 or more". It's really all about looking for changes in what is normal for you that you can't easily ascribe to changes in what you've been doing, possibly accompanied by other symptoms such as pain or unusual urine colour.

If you're looking to discover the exact effect of drinking 225ml of liquid before going to bed, your most reliable route won't involve looking stuff up on the internet, it will be conducting personal experiments and keeping meticulous notes. As with any experiment, you'll get more reliable results by changing one variable at a time (e.g. volume of liquid, ingredients of liquid) and collecting enough data between changes to give confounding factors a good chance to average themselves out.

I can't see how you could possibly harm yourself by experimenting with how much you drink before sleeping. The absolute worst case scenario might involve needing to launder some wet bedding.
posted by flabdablet at 9:24 PM on February 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Is it the same if a person drinks nothing for hours before bed, versus as much liquid as possible (without getting to this kind of amout:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-drinking-too-much-water-can-kill/)
Anyway none of them are giving the basic information. Re. the websites that say see your doctor if it's more than once a night, I'm trying to find them, but they are the well known once Web md, Cleveland clinic etc. But Mayo clinic (I posted in my last post) gave me 2 different webpages for almost the same search terms ("frequency" versus "frequent")so I don't know if there is even another one.

I have to continue this later.
posted by amfgf at 3:00 PM on February 27, 2023

Response by poster: Thank you all.
"If you need to go to the toilet very often, more than seven times a day on drinking approximately 2 litres of fluid, you may have a frequency problem.…"
https://www.bladderandbowel.org/?s=frequent+urination


"As with many things in life, everyone is different. This also applies to normal urinary frequency. For most people, the normal number of times to urinate per day is between 6 – 7 in a 24 hour period. Between 4 and 10 times a day can also be normal if that person is healthy and happy with the number of times they visit the toilet."
https://www.bladderandbowel.org/bladder/bladder-conditions-and-symptoms/frequency/

"People with polyuria urinate >3,000mL in 24 hours."
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/14510-nocturia



I'll be back with the ones that don't mention that just drinking too much close enough to bedtime leads to having to get up more than when you don't drink anything, and the ones that just say see your doctor if it's more than once a night, and the one that says night is supposed to be more times at night than day, which makes sense.
posted by amfgf at 1:46 PM on March 1, 2023