People never give any though to control of their bladder until they don’t have it anymore. For men it’s something that may be inevitable if they have BPH or an enlarged prostate. There can be other reason a person starts to have an overactive bladder, and it may be a situation for a person of either gender and not always related to physiological changes in the body. There is some reason to believe that dealing with mental perturbations can make a person have less control of bodily functions, and waste elimination among them. So this leads to asking can anxiety cause overactive bladder.  

Those who have severe anxiety attack will relate to how sometimes it’s not possible to keep their heart from racing, their hands from shaking, or even from having their throat constrict if they are having an especially bad one. The problem with anxiety is that it involves a lot of cortisol coursing through the body. This stress hormone is very beneficial when it’s present in moderate quantities, but if there is too much of it then it can promote the anxiety attack symptoms we talked about here. There is a connection between cortisol levels and anxiety, but there’s not the same type of one with can stress and anxiety cause overactive bladder.  

So it is not like if you have a spike in cortisol you’re likely to be urgently finding a washroom if you’re not so lucky as to be at home. The truth with can anxiety cause overactive bladder is that people who start to experience it during an anxiety attack are probably in the early stages of urinary incontinence. That could be everything from a man having an enlarged prostate to people of either sex simply having weakened muscles around the bladder walls for whatever reason. The effects of anxiety and elevated cortisol push that over the top and they start to experience powerful urges to urinate.  

Blame Goes Around 

Another interesting point to be aware of with can anxiety cause overactive bladder is that it may be more of a problem for women who are mothers. Childbirth can weaken the muscles we talked about earlier here, and the ones that can move in ways that signal the bladder to release contents. But the blame for it is going need to be passed around. For women it could be childbirth years earlier and then increased anxiety in older life along with a deficiency of the GABA neurotransmitter in the brain.  

While for men it could be low-grade BPH along with those same higher anxiety-causing factors and brain neurotransmitter imbalances. Bladder inflammation may be an issue too. So it’s a yes for can anxiety cause overactive bladder, but the important takeaway here is that it’s usually not the only factor going into it. In most instances the person will be older and beginning to experience less control of their bladder already, even if they’re not quite aware of it yet.