How many times have we attended a meeting focused on an important issue and have we not realized or ignored that we should urinate badly?We get in the car, continue with the meeting proposals in mind and listen to music until we reach our destination and park. When we get out of the car and take the keys out of our pocket, we feel a desperate need to urinate and it looks like the bladder is about to burst.
The 200 meters that we have left to open the door of our house become infinite, yes, endless: we try to relax, to walk faster, but sometimes everything becomes ineffective, then comes the epicenter of despair, by putting the key in the door. of the building, we opened it and, as Murphy’s Law indicates, the elevator stops on the 12th floor.
- However.
- The delay of the elevator causes an imminent delay in urination of a few more minutes.
- The thing is that when you arrive and open the door.
- The feeling of despair increases until you put the keys in the lock of what would then be the gates of paradise.
We run straight to the bathroom and see nothing but what we are looking for: a throne that will guarantee us that immense pleasure of emptying our poor bladder. Besides another very important thing: not to urinate on ourselves.
This same effect occurs with intestinal motility. Everything seems to be under the strictest control until we realize it and we don’t have a bathroom around. The question is whether the alert about the need to empty the intestine lasts, because when it lasts, it ends up increasing.
Immediately increases anxiety and tension, necessities. Even the most demanding and obsessive cleaners, who would never dream of going to the public bathroom, go to the bathroom because of the desperate tension of the possible excremental disaster: clean, dirty, disgusting. health care, etc.
The image of the scene desperate to return home, as well as the example of public baths, apply to both needs, but the big question is: what is the reason for this need to urinate as soon as one approaches fate?mechanisms that increase the desire to expel waste from our body, how are they activated?We’ll talk about this in more detail below.
Undoubtedly, there is a profound union between the physiological need, the organ (intestinal and bladder), the mind and brain, the center of attention and vigilance, the situational context and the emotions (anxiety, tension, despair) that structure the combination. present in the previous scenes.
The truth is that if we make a list of the activities we do once we get home, going to the bathroom wins, but if this can be understood as a superficial question, this situation has a scientific explanation, more specifically neurophysiological, biochemical, emotional. cognitive and cognitive.
Now we must take into account that our way of thinking emphasizes the dissociation of the body, on the one hand, and of the mind on the other, because the Cartesian dichotomy continues to persist among us as a germ that does not die.
However, neuroscience, specifically psychoimmunoneuroendocrinology, has shown and demonstrated that we are a body and a mind and that none of the systems, neither the immune system, nor the endocrine system, nor the nervous system, work separately. an explanation of this phenomenon that can be considered banal.
There are several biochemical changes that occur as we approach our destination, at first the recognition and attention to the bladder or the entire intestine, this concentration of attention accelerates the activated need to evacuate, the more we focus, the more activated it is.
On the other hand, the proximity of the house, where there is security and tranquility, accelerates the need. Undoubtedly, it is a stressful situation that, combined with the mechanisms of fear (to overcome it), activates adrenaline and cortisol, in addition to a whole set of abdominal muscles that tend to anxiety and proliferation of the fixed idea: the Sala glass Rest.
The desperate and urgent urge to urinate is called kit incontinence, which would also extend to bowel movements. This phenomenon shows the link between the bladder, intestines (the gastrointestinal system) and the brain.
When I think of the contact of my fingers trying to open the door, I can’t help but think of Pavlov’s theory. This phenomenon belongs to the group of conditioned reflexes, as does the Pavlovian experience.
This type of incontinence is comparable to the experiment conducted by the Russian psychologist Ivan Pavlov, who fed a dog at the same time that a bell sounded, after a time of systematization of the experiment, sounded, but did not introduce the food. observing that the dog was salivating even though there was no food.
If you put this experience in parallel, it’s the same thing that happens to people who want to urinate or defecate. “We associate the bathroom with our physiological need and activate awareness of our physical sensations, indicating that we want to go to The Toilet?, says Dr. Héctor Galvon, Director of the Institute of Psychology of Madrid.
Ghei and Malone-Lee have identified four environmental factors that produce this desperate urge to urinate: waking up in the morning, keys at the door of the house, the faucet flowing with running water and cold, differentiating the urgency of ‘Can’t you take it anymore?Incontinence? Ups, did I ore ?. They also noticed that anxiety and fatigue exacerbated these conditions.
For example, hearing the sound of water running is like urinating in the bathroom, when we hear a noise similar to that of expulsion from urine there is an immediate association and we cause an increase in the contractility of the bladder muscle (the detriusor).
In contrast, three columbia University researchers (Victor, O’Connell, and Blavias) conducted a pilot study to evaluate environmental signals that may be stimuli for conditioned reflexes in these circumstances. The results coincided in part with Ghei and Malone’s studies: first, waking up in the morning; second (88%), on the way to the bathroom; (76%), have a full bladder, and fourth (71%), open the door.
We realized the need to go to the bathroom to urinate with 150 or 200 ml of urine in the bladder, and when it is very full, it is possible that a sneeze, cough or laughter can cause leaks, of course not everything is lost. : it is possible to control the uncontainable need to urinate.
You just need to calm down, reduce anxiety, not think you’re near the bathroom and get distracted thinking about something else, all of this helps control the will. However, without mistreatment, because you have to take care of the bladder and intestine.
Finally, everything is in our brain: as a great commander, he models, builds and deconstructs realities in a team game, a synergy between the mind, brain, emotions, cognitions and all body systems.