Briefly, it seems to be recognised that there are two very different explanations of what causes the frequency problem.
Either, that your bladder has become more muscular and therefore smaller from years of having to pass your urine past partial blockages in your urine tract – down to 200 mls or less, so that it takes less time for your bladder to be full again.
Or, that, for whatever reason, your bladder has become weaker, too weak to empty itself properly when you urinate, and so it takes less time for it to be full again.
If you’re experiencing this problem, there’s a simple way of determining which is the most likely cause in your case – have a Urologist measure your bladder’s capacity.
If the cause is the second one, in our experience, even the best Urologists tell you that nothing can be done about weak bladders.
If the cause in your case is the first one, in an experience claimed by one of our readers, (full details of which have been provided many times on this blog,) a Dr Andrew Brooks, Urologist, advised, and carried out, a TURP operation, which he claimed would largely fix the problem within 3 months or so, (it would be interesting to know if is still telling this to, and doing this with patients?) and, as a result, (1) our reader underwent an operation under a full anaesthetic, which always has its risks, (2) spent two days in hospital, (3) was damaged for life in a highly personal way, it always happens with TURP operations, and can’t be reversed, (4) all at a cost of more than $6,000, including Brooks’ $3,200 fee for less than hours work, even after Medicare rebates, BUT, as Brooks himself put in writing on 9 Sep. 2014, (27 days after the TURP,) he “He still has significant frequency and urgency,” and on 18 Nov. 2014, (3 months and 5 days after the TURP,) “Unfortunately the frequency and urgency is not resolved.”
Incidentally, our reader claims that there never was an “urgency” problem – his referring to same, and his subsequent prescribing medication specifically to deal with it, is described by our reader as typical Brooks rubbish.
Incidentally, also, our reader also claims that Brooks had his nurse carry out the tests to establish the capacity of his bladder, (for more than it would have cost to have a properly qualified Urologist carry it out) – and that presumably it supported Brooks’ claim that it’s capacity was 200 mls or less. It’s said “presumably,” because our reader claims that he’s never been able to get Brooks to provide him with a copy of his nurse’s report, despite the fact that he’s entitled to it by law, and despite enlisting the support of the NSW Privacy Commissioner, who turned out to be completely and utterly useless – what a surprise?
As well as the problem of having to get up 2 or 3 times a night, something that can be almost as bad is that apparently it’s quite common for it to take quite a long time, after people have got up, before they can urinate successfully. Our reader claims that often, after he’d got up, he needed to work on his computer, or something, for up to half an hour before he could urinate successfully – something which he says one of the Urologists he consulted told him was also a well recognised problem.
To complete this story, our reader claims that, after his experiences with Brooks in 2014, he continued to experience the frequency problem, until 1 October, 2018, when he started to be on Low Dose Naltrexone – described by some as the 5th greatest medical breakthrough in the history of mankind, and perhaps the greatest – and that these days, amongst other thing, he mostly doesn’t have to get up at all, and NEVER has to get up more than once, AND can usually urinate more or less straight away!
And if readers haven’t heard of Low Dose Naltrexone, we could write a book on it, and just about have – it’s story is one of the greatest scandals ever.
We keep being reminded of what Albert Einstein apparently used to say- “There are two things that are infinite – the Universe, and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the Universe.” And you couldn’t get a better example of human stupidity than the Low Dose Naltrexone story.
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