In our experience, and that reported by other centers and physicians who have worked in this field, it is quite common for both men and women who develop a chronic pelvic pain condition also exhibit urinary dysfunction.  Urinary frequency and urgency is one of the most common symptoms of patients who come to our 6 day immersion clinics. It has been well reported that approximately 71% of men experience symptoms such as urinary frequency, urgency, nocturia, poor urinary flow and even pain in the bladder upon filling.  In most of the male patients, there is little to no laboratory or imaging evidence to incriminate the prostate as the source of this pain and urinary symptomatology.

There are women as well suffering chronic pelvic pain with no bladder or organ pathology who have symptoms of urinary frequency and urgency. Both women and men typically have sore and painful anterior (which means located toward the front) musculature within the pelvis floor that refer sensations of urinary frequency and urgency when certain trigger points in the front of the pelvic are palpated. With almost all of the men and women with urinary frequency and urgency and no evidence of organ or related physical pathology, we find trigger points in the pelvic floor and related areas that tend to refer sensations of urinary frequency.

The relationship between sore, painful pelvic floor muscles and urinary frequency is not intuitively clear. Indeed how is it that one has urinary frequency and urgency but with no pathology, infection in or of the organs of the urogenital tract.

When I first had pelvic symptoms, I just had urinary frequency with no pain other than the uncomfortable symptoms you have with urinary frequency and urgency. As time went on, I had most of the symptoms we describe in our book including urinary frequency and urgency, sometimes in the extreme. The doctor could find no physical pathology. Nevertheless I suffered with sometimes extreme urgency, voiding little, never feeling emptied or relaxed the way urination feels in someone without pelvic pain. As I recovered, I went from sometimes feeling that I had to void every 15- 30 minutes to feeling normal in this area and noticing I went 3-5 hours with no undue distress. When I had urinary symptoms, I remember when I went to a movie, I always sat in an aisle seat at in a movie theatre because I could never sit through a whole movie without having to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie. I experienced a difficult to describe, gnawing, aching irritated feeling in and around the bladder. After my recovery, my urinary frequency and urgency disappeared and urination disappeared.

When someone is suffering from urinary frequency and urgency with no known physical pathology, they feel uncomfortable in and around the bladder, they feel like they need to urinate, often urinating small amounts which don’t resolve the feeling of having to urinate the way one normally feels resolved after a trip to the bathroom. When you have urinary symptoms related to pelvic floor pain and dysfunction, the sensation in and around the bladder simply doesn’t feel normal. So what is going on here? This is a question I believe some people suffering from pelvic pain are baffled by. Being able to easily wait to go to the bathroom is important in many situations in modern life including work, social and recreation related situations. That there is gnawing, uncomfortable feeling in the bladder and urinary tract can be very distressing as it persists without resolution.

So here are thoughts I share with you about the phenomenon of urinary frequency and urgency arising when someone has pelvic pain and subsiding or disappearing with the subsidence of pelvic pain. I would like to propose that afferent (sensory) nerves associated with the bladder or a neighboring receptor in the pelvic neural network may be affected by the tension, discomfort and anxiety originating within the pelvic muscles.  This afferent plexus, or branching network of intersecting nerves of the lower urinary tract is complex and responsive to a variety of different kinds of stimulation including stress and anxiety and pain. Many of us have experienced the need to urinary under circumstances of extreme anxiety or stress.  The theory I propose is that pain and anxiety triggers the branch of the autonomic nervous system related to bladder relaxation – bladder relaxation that is felt as the need to urinate. Absent pain in the pelvis using our protocol, we have often seen someone’s urinary frequency and urgency reduce or entirely go away without any drugs or other interventions.

We all know of the colloquial term to be so scared you pee in your pants. This colloquialism refers to a moment of urinary urgency occurring under conditions of extreme fear or stress. In my personal journey with pelvic pain, I thought that the pain in my pelvis was something that my brain confused with the discomfort of a full bladder that urination would relieve. In a person without pelvic pain, you feel relaxed after urination. My sense when I was symptomatic was that somehow my brain confused the discomfort in my pelvis with the discomfort of a full bladder that is relieved with urination. What is clear is that urinary frequency and urgency is often present when someone has pelvic floor pain and no other physical findings, and the urinary frequency and urgency can disappear once the pelvic pain resolves.

I hope this is a helpful essay about this interesting subject.