Everything may shrink as you get older but your bladder says the same

May 25 2005

New research has found that contrary to popular myth and opinion, the bladder does not in fact shrink as we get older.

Many people find as they get older that they need to go to the toilet more frequently, and University of Pittsburgh researchers say this has nothing to do with a shrinking bladder but it is more likely due to an underlying medical condition.

Researcher Professor Neil Resnick says that many of us, after reaching a certain age, notice that we have to urinate more frequently and with more urgency.

An overactive bladder means a person is urinating more than eight times in a 24 hour period and for some the inability to suppress the urgency results in the leaking or loss of urine.

The standard assumption, says Resnick, which seems to have become part of our folklore, is that your bladder shrinks as you get older, and this is not the case.

According to the Pittsburgh team while bladder and urethral function deteriorate throughout adult life, bladder capacity rarely changes.

They say women with normally aging bladders had weaker bladder sensation, but women who experienced increased bladder sensation as they aged actually had an underlying condition called detrusor overactivity (DO).

DO is a very common condition, often referred to as overactive bladder, and means that the detrusor muscle that controls the emptying of the bladder contracts involuntarily, creating a strong, sometimes uncontrollable urge to empty the bladder.

Professor Resnick says that when a woman tells her doctor that she thinks her bladder is shrinking, doctors will now realise that it is more likely she is suffering from DO than from a smaller bladder.

Resnick says that any woman experiencing urgency or incontinence should see her doctor as DO is treatable.

Ian Holland, of the Continence Foundation, says DO was a common problem across all age ranges, and the unpleasant preconception that incontinence is an old person's problem is not true and even though it does become more common as people age, it also affects a significant number of youngsters.

Details of the study, of 95 women aged between 22 and 90, were presented to a conference of the American Urological Association in San Antonio.