Can holding urine cause cystitis? Can drinking more water cure it?

Author: Zhou Liqun, Chief Physician, Peking University First Hospital

Honorary President of the Urology Branch of the Chinese Medical Association

Reviewer: Zhang Kai, Chief Physician, Peking University First Hospital

When riding a long-distance bus, watching a wonderful program, or attending a meeting with your superiors...

In daily life, we often need to "hold our urine".

1. Will holding urine frequently cause cystitis?

Many people ask this question, especially taxi drivers. Taxi drivers cannot go to the toilet at any time, so they need to hold their urine frequently.

From a certain perspective, holding urine is indeed a risk factor for urinary tract infection.

Normal people do not have residual urine when urinating, and can completely discharge urine. For example, if there is 400 ml of urine, it should be completely discharged without any residual urine.

Taxi drivers often hold their urine, which will expand the bladder capacity and affect the bladder function, leading to decreased bladder function and incomplete urination, resulting in residual urine. Residual urine is very likely to cause infection.

Figure 1 Original copyright image, no permission to reprint

So in the long run, holding urine is related to urinary tract infection, or cystitis.

2. Can cystitis heal on its own without treatment?

This depends on the patient's age and body resistance. Some young people do not take medicine, but because they are young and have strong body resistance, they can recover on their own.

For more serious patients, urination will be very painful, and there is a description called knife-like pain. The urination process is very painful. Patients often see a doctor because they can't stand the pain. The doctor will give them antibiotics and other drugs to relieve the pain.

However, some patients may not have serious conditions or severe pain, so they do not seek medical treatment in time, and sometimes they can recover on their own relying on their own resistance.

We often tell patients to drink more water. Why? Because bacterial infection is in the bladder, drinking more water can produce more urine, and more urine can expel dirt and bacteria from the body. This is also a natural mechanism of the human body to resist infection - using urine to clean the urinary system.

Figure 2 Original copyright image, no permission to reprint

So some people don't necessarily have to take medicine. Whether it is subjective or objective, some people can heal themselves.

However, from a doctor's perspective, we do not advocate for hardship. If there are obvious symptoms, such as frequent urination, urgency, and pain when urinating, you should still go to a regular hospital for treatment. If it is a simple urinary tract infection, generally 7-10 days of antibiotics can completely cure the disease.

Especially for some older people, in addition to using medication to treat the infection, we also need to do some simple examinations, such as B-ultrasound, to rule out other accompanying diseases.

3. What may be the cause of recurrent cystitis?

For patients with recurrent cystitis, for example, the infection is healed this time, but it recurs after one or two months or half a year, and it recurs many times. What should we pay attention to for such patients?

Some patients have urinary stones, but they don't know it and don't have any symptoms. Infectious stones are very common, and stones are the source of bacteria. If the patient's physical condition weakens for some reason after a period of time, cystitis will recur.

For some bladder cancer patients, the only obvious symptom is urinary tract infection, which manifests as frequent urination, urgency, and pain when urinating. If the cancer patient manifests in the form of urinary tract infection, our professional doctors are needed to make a differential diagnosis.

Generally speaking, in addition to a simple urine test, a B-ultrasound examination is also required. Because B-ultrasound has the advantages of being painless and non-invasive, and does not harm the patient, B-ultrasound can often detect urinary system stones, tumors and other diseases.

There is also tuberculosis, which we call a special urinary tract infection. The incidence of tuberculosis in my country was very high before liberation. Many people suffered from the loss of one kidney function, contralateral hydronephrosis, and even renal failure and bladder contracture due to this disease.

However, due to the improvement of living standards and medical standards, the incidence of tuberculosis has been greatly reduced, and the incidence of urinary system tuberculosis has also been greatly reduced. However, in recent years, the incidence of tuberculosis has been on the rise again, so we should still pay more attention.

If cystitis recurs repeatedly, we should ask whether the patient has a history of contact with tuberculosis, such as whether his parents, grandparents and relatives have had tuberculosis. Understanding the medical history is also very important for determining whether there is tuberculosis.

In other words, we need to find out the specific reasons for the recurring attacks of cystitis. Only by finding the root cause can we completely eliminate it.