Do You Pee Frequently at Night These Days? You Might Be Suffering From This Dangerous Health Issue

Do you often get up to pee in the middle of the night? You might have this diet problem.

You know the drill.

Your eyes flutter awake, you check your phone and it’s 3:47am. You calculate how many more hours you can sleep if you go back to sleep right this second when suddenly you need to pee.

Usually this notion of getting out of bed, to the bathroom and doing your business will wake you up more than you’d like and the next thing you know your alarm is going off after what feels like 20 minutes extra sleep.

However, the early hours visit to the bathroom could actually be a sign of a more serious health problem.

In a new study shown at the European Society of Urology congress in London, researchers from Nagasaki University in Japan revealed if you often get up to pee in the night this could be a sign you have too much salt in your diet.

There is actually a name for this condition – nocturia – and the research suggested consuming less salt would reduce the urge to pee in the night and promote overall health.

As the body becomes less efficient at dealing with salt as we age, the researchers suggested this finding could help older people who struggle with multiple bathroom trips during the night.

Brits on average consume around 8.1g of salt per day – higher than the recommended 6g.

"This is the first study to measure how salt intake affects the frequency of going to the bathroom, so we need to confirm the work with larger studies,” study author Dr Matsuo Tomohiro explained.


"This work holds out the possibility that a simply [sic] dietary modification might significantly improve the quality of life for many people."

During the study, the team followed 321 volunteers who suffered from sleeping problems and also had a high salt intake.

A third of the volunteers – 223 of them – cut down their salt intake and as a result they used the bathroom less frequently both in the day and the evening.

The remaining 98 individuals ate more salt than normal over the 12 weeks and this group reported more bathroom trips during this period.

While this is just one reason to cut down your salt intake, prior studies have shown salt can cause high blood pressure and affect your arteries, kidneys and your brain.

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