One of the Most Annoying Parts of Growing Old - And How to Fix It

We have over night caregivers primarily to ensure the safety of our residents. They normally check on the residents throughout the night to make sure everything is ok.

One of the caregiver’s most common duties is helping a resident go to the bathroom. It just seems to be part of old age.

The reason we need to ‘go’ more in the night as we age is a loss of a hormone called Vasopressin or the Anti-diuretic hormone, or ADH. ADH helps your body retain fluids better and minimizes the urge to urinate. As we see when we test for hormones in our assisted living residents, the amount of hormones drops across the board in old age.

When you were younger, your body excreted more ADH at night to allow you to sleep. As you age, your ability to excrete the hormone drops as well - hence more urination.

There are lots of other conditions that can make urination more frequent at night, especially in the elderly:

• Urinary tract infections

• Diabetes (boy, doesn’t that contribute to everything going wrong in your body?)

• Overactive bladder conditions

• Kidney disease

• Enlarged prostate in men

• Bladder cancer

• Certain medications such as blood pressure meds

• Constipation

• Interstitial Cystitis

You’re also not doing yourself any favors if you want a good night’s sleep and you do these things:

• Drink a lot of fluid right before bed

• Consume a bunch of alcohol or caffeine

• Get pregnant (not a big problem for old people)

• Live with lots of stress and anxiety

I have this problem. I was waking up once or twice a night to urinate for years. My doctor would tell me that it is because I have a slightly enlarged prostate. I figured there was nothing I could do.

But as the Pandemic taught us, and the news media warned us strongly not to do, I did my own research.

I came across the idea that your waste elimination system, especially your kidneys, is very tuned into your circadian rhythm. They strongly rely on circadian clock genes.

Every day I marvel at the human body and its design. The kidneys filter fluid out of your body at a very rapid rate for the first 10 hours after waking. Then it slows down as it becomes night time to prevent you going to the bathroom at the same rate you did during the day.

So here are some simple rules I learned from Andrew Huberman about how to use this circadian rhythm to your advantage:

1. Consume a lot of water in the first 10 hours after waking up. I drink about 3 large glasses of water with some salt in it in the morning

2. After those 10 hours, only consume about 5-8 ounces of water until you go to bed. Stay away from alcohol and caffeine

3. It doesn’t matter during those 10 hours if you sip or gulp the water, but closer to bed you want to sip the water

I’ve been trying this for a couple of months now. I have many nights where I don’t wake up in the middle of the night at all. I highly recommend it.