A common medical problem in seniors, men at least, is that they have to get up 2 or 3 times a night to urinate, which can make it difficult to get a good night’s sleep.
One of the explanations for this is that their bladder has become more muscular and therefore smaller from years of having to force their urine past partial blockages in their urinary tract, reducing it’s capacity to 200 mls or less, so that when they have 200 mls or less of urine in their bladder they have to get up and urinate.
The only Urologist we’ve heard of to provide this explanation – he provided it to one of our readers and perhaps continues to provide it to others – was/is Dr Andrew Brooks – and, as we’ve written about extensively in previous posts, all the indications are that this was a false explanation – Brooks just uses it to justify him in recommending a surgical procedure which he carries out for $3,200 for less than an hour’s work, and doesn’t help anyway!
We’ve found that the more common explanation is that the patient’s bladder has become weaker, perhaps because they’ve grown older, or for some other reason, too weak to empty their bladder properly when they urinate, so that after they’ve urinated there’s still urine in their bladder, so that it takes less time before they have to urinate again.
(A very simple way for patients to determine which explanation is the most likely, is to have the capacity of their bladder measured, preferably by a fully qualified Urologist – Brooks used his nurse to measure the capacity of our reader’s bladder, (for more than a fully qualified Urologist would have charged,) and, of course, Brooks claimed that it backed up his explanation, when all the indications are that it didn’t at all! We’ve tried every trick in the book to get a copy of the nurse’s report, to which, of course, we’re entitled by law, including seeking the assistance of the NSW Privacy Commissioner, (who, of course, was/is useless,) without success. In other word’s Brooks is breaking the law, and NOBODY CARES!)
The problem is that, if the explanation is that you’ve got a weak bladder, nothing can be done about weak bladders – no big fat fees for Urologists.
Our point in going over all this is that it’s being claimed for Low Dose Naltrexone, by one of our readers in particular, that if you’re on it, you often don’t have to get up at night even once, and often not at all!!! In other words, it solves the problem!
AND furthermore, what we’ve found extremely disappointing, is that we took the time and trouble to make one of the Urologists, who otherwise we thought was once of the best doctors we’d come across, fully aware of this – and our email wasn’t even acknowledged. Presumably he’s still telling patients, “You’ve got a weak bladder, and nothing can be done about weak bladders.”
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