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Why Sugar Makes a Difference
What you eat may have a big effect on how your bladder acts! Certain foods and fluids can irritate your bladder, causing urgency, more frequency and even leaks. Each person is different, but there is a long list of foods that cause bladder irritation. Johns Hopkins entire list is here. Some common ones are alcohol, coffee, spicy foods, sugar, milk products, tomatoes and citrus juices.
The best way to determine what particular foods affect your bladder is to try eliminating one or more of these foods and see if your symptoms improve. Strict adherence should bring relief within 10 days.
Sugar is one of the common bladder irritants that sneaks into our diets, especially this time of year. Even the artificial sweeteners, such as saccharin and aspartame, corn sweeteners, honey, fructose, sucrose and lactose can be culprits. If you choose to eliminate sugar as an experiment in tracking down what is affecting your bladder, make sure you eliminate all the other sweeteners as well.
Too much sugar in your diet can lead to other health problems, too, so this might be a good one to cut out. Increased sugar can cause higher blood sugar levels, and pre-diabetes, which can create the frequent need to go and potential leaks. The increased calories in sugary food can also lead to weight gain. Incontinence is definitely related to high body weight, which places more strain on the pelvic floor muscles.
Bladder irritants love concentrated urine. Drink significant amounts of water to create dilute urine. That way, even if you have eaten an offending food, it will have less impact on your bladder urgency.
