1. An Embarrassing Accident
Just to keep it real: Peeing your pants is a real possibility because the crossing your legs really tight trick
is only going to work for so long. “As your bladder gets fuller and
fuller, there’s a good chance you aren’t going to make it to the
bathroom on time,” Streicher says. Imagine your bladder like a water
balloon that’s filling up — the longer you hold off going to the
bathroom, the bigger and heavier it gets. And the muscles that contract
to keep your bladder sealed can only withstand the pressure for so long
before it will start to leak.
So the next time the bathroom
feels like 11 steps too far away and you just can’t even, think about
this: Do you really want to be the grown-ass woman who just peed her
pants because she didn’t feel like prying herself away from her
deadline? It may not be a super scary medical condition, but still.
2. Your Pelvic Floor Might Get Weak
When you force your bladder to constantly carry around a bowling ball’s worth of pee for hours, the muscles in your pelvic floor
start to lose strength. “Pelvic floor muscles contract in a coordinated
fashion to help you either release pee or hold it,” Streicher says.
“But if you’re continually holding urine, you can end up with some real
dysfunction of your pelvic floor muscles.” Over time, that can cause you
to lose control of your bladder functions.
Don’t freak out if you
feel the urge to go and your boss pulls you into her office for a quick
brainstorming session when you were about to jet to the ladies’ room,
or if you’re on a road trip
and it’s an eternity till the next rest stop. “There’s a big difference
between someone who holds it once in a blue moon and someone who does
it all the time,” Streicher says. “Every now and then isn’t going to
cause huge problems.”
3. Long-Lasting Pain
That feeling you get after you’ve been holding it forever and finally
go? Sweet relief — but maybe not. If it’s been too long, you may
continue to hurt. “Once the pain signals have been trigged in the lower
abdomen, the pain may not just go away,” Streicher says. “Your muscles
are clenching and are almost in a spasm, so they’re not able to just
relax.”
And the pain may last
for days. “I see a lot of people who come in with lower abdominal pain
and think that something is seriously wrong, and one of the things I
look for is does the person have normal bladder habits,” Streicher says.
“And a lot of times, they don’t. Well, that causes pain that may stick
around for awhile.”
4. Your Bladder Might Get Stretched Out
As mentioned above,
your bladder is (thankfully) not going to blow up, but it’s certainly
going to get stretched to its limits. One of the big side effects of an
overextended bladder? Your body may start missing cues that your bladder
needs emptied, and those messages your brain sends to your body that it
needs to go to the bathroom are important (for obvious reasons).
But wait — before you start bolting to the bathroom every time you feel a pang to pee,
know that “you don’t have to urinate the minute you feel the urge to
go,” Streicher says. “A good measure is that it should never get to the
point that you’re uncomfortable. Holding it to that point is too long.”
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