Children naturally gain bladder control at night and they do so at different ages. From 5 to 7 million kids wet the bed some or most nights. (Twice as many boys wet their bed compared to girls.) After age 5, about 15% of children continue to wet the bed, and by age 10 up to 5% still wet the bed.

One in 50 teenagers still wet the bed and almost half of 19 year-olds who have a problem are wetting the bed every night, according to research published in a May issue of the urology journal BJUI International.

Causes of Bedwetting

There are 2 types of bedwetting: primary and secondary. Primary means bedwetting that has been ongoing since early childhood without a break. A child with primary bedwetting has never been dry at night for any significant length of time. Secondary bedwetting is bedwetting that starts up after the child has been dry at night for at least 6 months.

Primary can be caused from not being completely potty trained. If a child is stubborn and refused to pee when needed, it can cause problems with night training. Secondary is typically from an underlying cause such as: diabetes, a urinary tract infection, emotional stressor (divorce, a breakup, being bullied, a move, etc.), deep sleeper, or an accident or injury.

Treatments

There are a few different ideas for treatment.

• Bed-wetting alarm: This will wake you up in the middle of the night to allow you to go to the bathroom.

• Positive reinforcement: A sticker chart on dry nights, to help reinforce positivity.

• Limiting fluid intake before bed and going to the bathroom before bed.

• Medications: Help reduce the amount of urine produced at night. (There are possible side effects!)

• Chiropractic!

Chiropractic

A chiropractic approach looks at the nerves to the bladder, which exit the low back (lumbar spine and sacrum). Trauma to the lower back or spine can cause problems with your bladder. Think of when kids are learning to walk, they fall on their butt, causing possible damage to the spine. (Just to name one incidence of injury! There are tons of ways your low back can get injured.)If you have a serious enough fall it can cause problems with wetting the bed (or other issues).

Doing muscle work on the gluteus muscles, low back muscles and adjusting the spine help tremendously in decrease incidence of bedwetting due to trauma.

In my practice I have helped several children over come bed wetting! I have noticed with my 2 year old daughter, (who has been potty trained since 18 months old) that if she has an accident after a long period of not wetting the bed, once she is adjusted, she will stay dry again. Kids do all kinds of crazy things and hurt themselves on a daily basis.

My son is 4 years old and just this past week had an accident during nap time and again that night! Poor little guy woke up crying and embarrassed and kept repeating “Mommy I don’t know why I wet the bed, I’m soooo sorry!”. That broke my heart! The next day I adjusted him and he has not had an accident since. We didn’t do anything else different!

So if you or a loved one suffers from bedwetting, try chiropractic! If you have any questions give us or a chiropractor near you a call.

~Dr. Lacey~
Carder Chiropractic Clinic, INC.
El Reno, OK 73036