Advanced Potty Training: What we know to do but don't :(

Hello there


Today I wanted to discuss a topic that my medical school professor let us 20 somethings know would be important: potty training. Actually he was talking about digestive disorders: constipation and laxatives, but for me it boils down to potty training both for urine and waste.


What? You say.......yes says I.


This is a frequent gyn problem for women who have learned to "hold it" that increase bladder capacity to a point of overwhelming the capacity of the urinary tract to function properly. Women are like toasters, they sit and pop up almost immediately. They will not always like where they are forced to void ( urinate, or pee to use the vernacular ).


From the time I became a medical student until my youngest child was about 10 I didn't have enough time to sit on the pot to wonder what day it was. I was an automaton and waited until the bladder shouted with pain to void. I also have a joke, if I can't find my nurse I say ....wait didn't she pee last week?


This is not really funny. It is life that intrudes. So I find the all too busy mother, nurse, teacher or now just woman, with a huge bladder capacity that leaks urine. This is overflow incontinence that is easily
remidable with a ten dollar watch from Wal Mart. Set it to beep every 3 hours and sit. Not for two seconds, but for two full minutes. That's a long time, especially when there is a long line of women waiting for the ladies room, but for the most part. SIT!


Sitting allows the urethral sphincter ( the muscle that controls the bladder neck ) to relax and open.
Then the bladder contracts and empties. Don't be like the soft ice cream machine, some comes out but it is full.


Same goes for number two. SIT! Find a time every day to do your business. Make it some YOU time if you must. Get a book, magazine, cell phone game, etc, you get the point. It helps if you don't have a two year old pounding the door yelling MOMMY!, but find ten full minutes to just sit. Think of it as a mental health break, as well as a digestive health break.


All too often I will see kids, teens, and women of all ages with vague lower abdominal pain that moves around. They google this stuff and are sure they have ovarian cancer. So I get a panicked woman who is constipated and wonders why I don't want to spend ten thousand dollars to assure her that is the only problem. I try to calm the world down, and say we are going to start with the cheap, frequent and easy things and then work our way up the ladder with complexity and cost. Most of the time this strategy works, occasionally they know somebody who is related to somebody who works with a woman who had the EXACT SAME THING, and her doctor blew her off and she had cancer and died.
It's like working during the Blair Witch Project. Geeze.


Sitting and potty training is important because it prevents all those vague nasty symptoms from arising in the first place, so you won't have the EXACT SAME THING as that unfortunate woman who died.


Double void, if you have to. That means, pee, wait and then pee again a few minutes later. That is a common problem among the toaster crowd. Plan on going twice. Then you are empty and won't spend all day with vague lower abdominal pain of a full bladder you only allow to partially empty.


So my advice to everyone, is that I have cured thousands of women with a few dried apricots. Four to get you going, two a day to keep you going. Natural, good for you and tastes better than prunes. Does not have the stigma of an old person's remedy. Works great.


Happy Sitting


Until next time...............