Bring on the dry nights!
If your child is wetting the bed at night, there’s a good chance your whole family is feeling emotionally stressed and your child’s self-esteem is likely to be suffering.
Bedwetting—also called nocturnal enuresis —is a chronic condition that is often hidden behind closed doors. Talking about urinary incontinence, overactive bladder, and bedwetting is stigmatised for being embarrassing, smelly or unclean.
Kids stuck in a cycle of bedwetting may have feelings of shame and low self-worth. This puts them at greater risk of developing social and learning problems. Parents and caregivers can feel overwhelmed with concern, frustration, and sleep deprivation.
Nightly laundry and never-ending hygiene chores take their toll on everyone. Family budgets buckle under the pressure to cover the costs of supporting the bedwetting child. It all adds up—disposable, absorbent pants and bedding, medical appointments, prescriptions, devices and other suggested treatments.
Deciding on the best approach for your child presents yet another challenge and dilemma. You want to be sure that treatments are gentle and effective and that they work.
If you, or someone you know, is caring for a child that wets the bed talk to your pharmacist. Help is at hand.
Understanding childhood bedwetting
Bedwetting is a urinary problem that is relatively common, affecting about 1 in 5 children starting primary school.
The urinary bladder is a hollow organ comprising a complex network of smooth muscle, nerves, veins and connective tissue. As babies and toddlers, we have no control over when our bladder empties. At this stage, a reflex between the bladder and spinal cord signals when there is enough pressure for the bladder to void. Weeing is completely involuntary.
But by the time a young child is about four or five, the neural pathway that connects their brain and bladder has been established and the child is in control of when they need to wee. They can recognise the urge and usually make it to the potty or toilet without any accidents—firstly during the day and, ultimately, while they are asleep at night.
For some kids, their brain’s signalling and communication pathways may take longer to develop and they will continue to wet the bed at night. It could be just the occasional accident or a frequent and chronic bedwetting condition.
The causes of bedwetting can be difficult to pin-point, but several factors are known to influence urinary problems in children. These include stress, diet, sleep and physical activity. Sleep and circadian rhythms can also interfere with a child’s ability to recognise the full bladder feeling and certain hormones can affect excessive night-time urine production.
Bedwetting can cause a child to suffer psychological harm. The child may feel ashamed, embarrassed, and even a burden to their families. They may start wanting to skip important social events like camps and sleepovers with friends because they fear the consequences of wetting the bed. Quality of life and wellbeing is reduced, and this can lead to low self-worth, anxiety and childhood depression. The situation spirals, especially if the condition causes them to be punished by parents or bullied by siblings.
Parents and caregivers can experience mental health problems and despair related to losing confidence in their parenting skills.
What can be done to reduce bedwetting
Many of the common strategies for reducing bedwetting, like no drinks at night and waking a sleeping child to go to the toilet or potty, are not proven to promote long-term night-time dryness. And showing your displeasure or punishing children will not help the problem whatsoever.
Using disposable absorbent pants and mattress protectors is, of course, a first line management strategy for keeping the sheets dry and reducing laundry.
While there is no gold standard in treating bedwetting, some children may benefit from working with behavioural or educational therapists to retrain the bladder to better control when and where they do a wee.
In a very small number of cases, your GP or specialist may recommend using a medical device like a bladder alarm or they may prescribe medication. Often these treatments are not adequately effective, and they can have unwanted side-effects—both physically and psychologically.
But now there is an advanced herbal formulation that offers your child a safe and effective dietary supplement to reduce bedwetting.
Herbal supplement signals new hope for bedwetting kids
Introducing Urox® Junior—a major advancement in the treatment of children’s bedwetting.
Urox® Junior is a clinically-researched and patented herbal formula that effectively reduces day and night-time wetting in children. It contains Urox®, a proprietary blend of Cratevox™ (Crateva nurvala), Equisetum arvense, and Lindera aggregata.
Published research (Schloss et al, 2021), conducted by one of Australia’s leading universities, shows that Urox® Junior improves occasional bedwetting.
The double-blind, placebo-control trial shows 62% of participants aged between 6 and 14, experienced significant improvements in bedwetting symptoms after 2 months of use.
Urox® Junior is also shown to significantly improve quality of life indicators for children and their parents. Children are happier and more confident when they don’t wet the bed.
Urox® Junior works to support the network of muscles and tissues that are make up your child’s bladder. Sprinkle one capsule morning and night on top of food or into water or juice. As your child grows, their bladder’s storage and signalling capacity will naturally improve.
Soon, you can rest easy because your child will be able to stay dry at night.
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