The urethra is the tube that leads your pee out of your body. You can squeeze this tube slightly by crossing your legs. Make sure you cross them while standing since in a seated position, it might only lead to more pressure on the bladder.
6. Try not to laugh.
When having a good laugh, your core muscles will tense, putting pressure on your bladder. However, the sphincter muscle, which closes the urethra to prevent leaking, relaxes with this increased pressure and that’s when urination occurs. So you’d better try to avoid giggling when you have the urge to pee!
7. Think of a distraction.
When your bladder is more or less half-full, nerves in the bladder will tell the brain that it’s time to go. This need to pee might be less urgent than it feels, so a distraction might override the urge to pee for a while. So next time, try to think about something else or scroll through your phone a bit and you will see that the feeling goes away.
8. Squeeze your butt.
Bladder control depends on the pelvic floor muscles which are the muscles around your peeing tube. Squeezing your butt cheeks together a few times is a quick exercise to tighten those muscles which can help hold urine inside the bladder, preventing leakage. You can do this in any position, standing up or sitting down.
9. Avoid getting into water.
The same phenomenon as explained previously can happen when you’re swimming in cold water. However, we suggest keeping out of the water altogether because when leaving a warm bath, going to a cooler place may suddenly give you an overwhelming desire to pee.
Bonus: Train yourself to hold more pee.
Some people need more frequent bathroom breaks than others. But this may be because you’ve taught yourself some bad habits which, believe it or not, can be reversed. Try this step-by-step bladder-training technique:
- For a day or 2, keep track of the times you urinate during the day.
- Select an interval for training that is 15 minutes longer than you normally take between toilet visits.
- When you start training, empty your bladder first thing in the morning. If the urge hits, use our techniques suggested in this article to delay it until your set interval.
- Start increasing your interval by 15 minutes every day. Over several weeks or months, you may find far fewer feelings of urgency!
