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We’re overcome by an urgent need as soon as we’ve put on our warm fleece or down jacket and ventured out into the cold. And not because we forgot to go to the bathroom before going out.
Muscle contractions are to blame
The explanation is entirely rational and physical. Muscle contractions—that is, muscles that tense up—are to blame. But first things first.
The phenomenon has actually been well-researched. In 1918, the Austrian doctor Alfred Adler dared to conduct an experiment designed to test the steep thesis of whether we really need to pee more when it gets cold.
The bladder experiment
He filled a bladder with cold water. He noticed an unusual reaction of the detrusor vesicae muscle. This is Latin and means something like “expulsion of the bladder.”
So what happens is quite simple: the muscles surrounding the bladder contract when it is cold. The pressure on the bladder increases, inevitably leading us to the question: Where is the nearest toilet?
To verify his revolutionary finding, Adler undertook a whole host of follow-up experiments on cats and humans. And… bingo! The same result is confirmed every time: the bladder’s sensitivity to cold.
Urologist Adrien Vidart explains the phenomenon as follows:
Lowering the temperature stimulates receptors that react to cold and are found particularly in the urethra and bladder. The receptors cause a muscle contraction. This contraction increases the bladder pressure and thus the urge to urinate.
The heat phenomenon
To make a long story short, the cold increases blood flow to the muscles to keep them warm, which in turn causes them to contract and ultimately leads to the intense urge to urinate.
In addition to this fatal effect of muscle contraction, there is a second phenomenon. Our body tries its best to retain its heat when it gets cold.
It does this by reducing blood flow to our extremities. This means that less blood flows through our hands or feet. Our hands and feet are exposed and, therefore, give off a relatively large amount of heat to the environment.
At the same time, something else happens in the body: it reacts to the cold by increasing the heart rhythm. All in all, more blood flows through the body. However, not in the hands and feet, but in the important organs such as the heart and brain. In other words, everything we need most urgently to survive.
The kidneys are challenged
However, this is not without consequences: the kidneys filter more blood because more blood flows. What the kidneys filter out is excreted in the urine. Increased kidney activity, therefore, leads to increased urine production.
The cold, therefore, has a double effect on our urge to urinate. That’s why we have to pee so often when it gets cold. By the way, you shouldn’t ignore this urge too much and for too long because that is unhealthy.
- source: gentside.de/picture: Image by Regan Theiler from Pixabay
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