Aaron Boster

So first, let's talk about why do we see bladder so frequently?

There's certain parts of your brain that control bladder, and those could be affected in MS.

But more commonly, the spinal cord has a lot of control over bladder.

And when the spinal cord gets beat up, you can have difficulties with bladder.

And there's actually different kinds of bladder problems.

You can have a tight little racquetball bladder where half a Coca-Cola and you got to sprint to the bathroom and you can't make it in time, God forbid.

That's called overactive bladder.

And then there's another problem where the outflow tract, the urethra, is tight like a swizzle straw and you can't push the urine through it and you have urinary retention.

And then sometimes nature is too generous and you can actually have both.

And so I would say that bladder problems are very common in MS and

it can make it so someone doesn't want to leave their house.

Now there's the devil's trick here because the normal thinking person would rationally say, okay, well, if I have a risk of peeing myself, I'm simply not going to drink fluids.

And that's actually dead wrong.

And the reason it's dead wrong is if you have blood, you will make urine.

And if you're not drinking water, that urine is uber concentrated and it's got a lot of metabolites and toxins, you know, from the blood and that irritates the bladder wall.

It's a bladder irritant.

And if you have bacteria in the bladder and it's a really concentrated urine, that's a better place for bacteria to live.

It's kind of like if you have like a cup of urine and you put it on the kitchen counter and left it there, it would grow a lot of bacteria.

Now, if you're drinking water all the time, you're going to pee more, which continually flushes the bacteria out of your bladder and it reduces the concentrations of the irritants.

And so it's actually counterintuitive, but people fare much, much better when they're drinking more water.