Natural Care for Bedwetting or Nocturnal Enuresis

Bedwetting or Nocturnal Enuresis occurs in around 50% of 3 year old children. The good news is that most children grow out of this minor problem. However, bedwetting does remain a problem for some children, typically boys, and bedwetting can persist for several years.  Nocturnal enuresis or wetting the bed at night is a common problem for many 6 year olds and some 8% of eight year old children. It is more common in families in which one or both parents wet the bed when they were children and where their child is male.

Bedwetting Causes

Some causes of bedwetting are:

• Neurologic dysfunction
• Not being able to tell when the bladder is full
• Small bladder capacity and/or bladder unable to hold the urine
• Constipation
• Sleep disorder with an extended very deep sleep cycle
• Stressful situations
• Disease (e.g. bacteriuria) or a physical problem is also a possibility but tends to be rare as a cause of bedwetting.

General things you could do for children Bedwetting

Avoid drinking large amounts of water just before bedtime.

Try to train the child’s bladder to hold larger volumes of urine during the day, this is effectively bladder stretching exercise to improve the bladders ability to hold urine.

Get the child into the habit of using the toilet just before their bedtime.

Try using an alarm that wakes the child so they can go to the toilet if urine is detected.

Specific help to consider for children Bedwetting

Seriously consider seeing your chiropractor for children’s bedwetting problems, chiropractors provide natural drug free care and can assist with the following causes of bedwetting:

Chiropractors can assist with chronic constipation problems

Chiropractors can detect and correct subluxations allowing messages to travel freely between the brain and bladder thus increasing chances that the child becomes cognisant of a full bladder.

Consider seeing a functional neurology specialist (usually a chiropractor with specialist post graduate neurology qualifications) - Very simply put, the chiropractic functional neurologist will evaluate for subtle changes in the nervous system and seek to identify the level of the blockage or reduced function in the nervous system or indeed the various levels or pathways in the brain. Once the level of the lesion or reduced function is established then treatment including individually highly specific stimulations and exercises designed to improve function of the underperforming area is administered.  Here is some research on Neurological Dysfunction and Bedwetting: One of the most common causes of nocturnal enuresis is an abnormality in the functional relationship between the neurologic and urologic systems. A large 30 to 40% of patients with polysymptomatic nocturnal enuresis have soft signs (i.e. impaired fine motor skills or speech defects or visual motor perception or decreased spatial or balance issues) of neurologic dysfunction._^1,2 Although some patients with enuresis have permanent neurologic dysfunction, most patients have only a delay in the acquisition of these neurologic skills. This latter finding coupled with the strong genetic influence suggests that delayed maturation in neurologic development and its subsequent coordination with the urologic system could be an inherited phenomenon._^1,2,3   

A functional neurologist should assist with all of the soft signs of neurological dysfunction.

References:

1.  Jarvelin MR, Moilanen I, Kangas P, Moring K, Vikevainen-Tervonen L, Huttunen NP, et al. Aetiological and precipitating factors for childhood enuresis. Acta Paediatr Scand 1991;80:361-369

2   Jarvelin MR.  Developmental history and neurological findings in enuretic children. Dev Med Child Neurol 1989;31:728-736

3   Bakwin H.  The genetics of enuresis. Clin Dev Med 1973;48/49:73-77

 Where possible we suggest avoid unnecessary medication. Note however that where there is burning sensation on urination or traces of blood in the urine or wetting is also occurring when the child is awake, then a paediatrician should be consulted.

Related Links – Bedwetting Resources