The Lowdown on Holding in Your Pee

It might not feel like it sometimes, but the adult bladder is designed to hold as much as half a liter (two cups) of urine before you’ll feel the need to relieve yourself.


Your body knows just how much is in there due to the fact that your bladder wall is filled with tiny receptors that send a message to your brain when your bladder has reached its capacity. Fortunately, the majority of us have full control over our bladder function, so when we receive this message, we can choose to relieve ourselves straight away, or hold it in because we’re not close to a bathroom.

But what are we doing to our bodies when we hold all this urine in?

Well, once you have made your mind up not to pee, the cylindrical sphincters in your bladder close up tightly in order to keep all that urine from leaking into your underwear. These tiny muscles are great at what they do, until you force them to do it consistently for a really long time, say if you’re a trucker and you’re holding your pee in on long journeys several times a week.

If you make it a habit of holding urine in for ages, you’re subjecting yourself to some pretty serious long-term effects, including a higher risk of infection. Constantly holding your pee in can weaken your bladder muscles, which could eventually lead to urinary retention – the dreaded condition that prevents you from being able to fully empty your bladder, meaning you’ll feel like you need to use the bathroom a lot more.

Holding in large volumes of urine for an extended period of time also exposes your body to some potentially harmful bacteria, which can increase your risk of getting a urinary tract or bladder infection.

All this sounds pretty bad, but it’s not exactly life-threatening, right? Well, that’s because you’re just not trying hard enough.