Polyuria

The elephant in the room is that as men get in their 50s they sometimes experience having to get up in the middle of the night to urinate. That happened to me and I didn't like it because a good nights sleep is very precious to me. So, I went to the doctor and found out nothing medically was wrong. Conventional wisdom is that as we get older we don't sleep as well so any pressure on the bladder wakes up, so we get up and urinate. I didn't accept that and as a result I sleep all night now. There are two reasons for that. First, I recognized that urination has a huge psychological component to it. We hear water running so we have to go, for example. For me whenever I pull in the driveway my bladder wants to "let go" and I used to accomodate it. We develop urination habits that subconsciously "train" our bladders. The solution? Re-train your bladder. Just say no. For me I would wake up during the middle of the night needing to go but I wouldn't get up until about 7 am. That made for a fitful sleep but over time it has gotten better. My bladder had to learn that we don't go until 7 am. Secondly, by frequent urination we cause our bladders to shrink and then they only have a small capacity. We want bladders with a huge capacity. This was illustrated to me by going to the urinal after a movie. I finished pretty quickly but the guy next to me urinated forever. I stood there for a long time in fascination at his bladder capacity. I recognized that me bladder needed to be bigger. We can increase our bladder capacity by going at longer intervals. Start small and work big. Some will say, "what about bladder infections?". Bladder infections are caused by bacteria climbing up the urethra into the bladder. Urination flushes the bacteria out. Normal bladders (capacity wise) don't get infected. All I'm saying is that we have made our bladders abnormally small. Work to stretch those bladders out. Sleep well my friends.

Chronic GI Problems

One of the things I have learned in Veterinary medicine is that animals with chronic GI problems do not absorb Vitamin B12 very well and that until you replace Vitamin B12 nothing else you do treatment wise will help very well. So how do you replace Vitamin B12 if it cannot be absorbed well? It has to be given via injection. A light clicked on for me recently... I have people that I am very close to that have chronic GI problems. Could Vit B12 help them? I urged them to consult with their doctors and they started taking Vit B12 injections once weekly. The results have been dramatic and quick... feeling better and being able to eat things they could not have eaten previously. Since then I have learned that people who are on various medications for gastric reflux, etc. also poorly absorb B12, i.e. the medications impair the absorption of B12. Vitamin B12 is a water soluble vitamin that is vital in many of the physiologic processes of the body. It's amazing that something so cheap and so simple can have such dramatic effects.