Frequent urination, also called as ‘polyuria’ is a condition where people who are diabetic feel the need to urinate often. This is a common symptom to diagnose diabetes in combination of other symptoms like unexplained weightloss, fatigue, slow wound healing, etc.

To understand why this happens, we must first understand what diabetes is. It is a condition where the body is unable to use glucose effectively. This can be due to insufficient insulin production (Type 1 diabetes) or ineffective use of insulin (Type 2 diabetes), both of which leads to high levels of glucose in blood. As a result, one tends to feel tired even after eating a full meal and glucose remains in the bloodstream, which shows up as high sugar levels in their blood test. This excess glucose is filtered out by kidneys working overtime and the excess glucose also draws out extra water from the body – resulting in frequent urination.

Once a person is managing their sugar levels with medication, this problem should not arise. However, some patients still suffer from frequent urination but only at night. Due to frequent waking (as many as 10 times for some), it leads to disturbed sleep and also depleted energy levels in the morning because what they ate at night has not been absorbed by the body. This usually happens because of one or all of the below factors:

• Having a late dinner and going to bed soon after
• Having an unbalanced carb-heavy meal
• Poor activity levels
• Reduced insulin sensitivity

Frequent urination does not have to be a condition one needs to suffer every night despite taking medication. On the other hand, reducing water intake before bedtime or skipping dinner is not a long term solution.

So what can we do about it?

• Balance your meal with a good amount of protein and fibre
• Have an early dinner and walk for 15-30 minutes after your meal or do some household chore, anything that counts as physical activity
• Make strength training a regular habit to improve insulin sensitivity as this will promote better glucose uptake from blood

Even through the day, regular moderate intensity exercise atleast 3-4 times a week and walking 15-30 minutes after each meal helps with effective diabetes management, even DIABETES PREVENTION!