Real cost of spending a penny at night? Your health

IT can be so frustrating... you have drifted off to sleep nicely but then wake up needing to go to the toilet.

Those night-time calls of nature, however, can have a more negative effect by also harming your life satisfaction and work performance, warns a study.

People who lose sleep like this are around two per cent less happy with their lives and lose an average of seven days of work a year through being off sick or working less efficiently through tiredness.

Nocturia affects 9.1million people in Britain, meaning they wake at least twice in the night to urinate, said the study by the RAND Europe research institute.

The condition affects women and older people most, with more than half of 70-yearolds suffering. The effects are estimated to cost the UK more than £4.5billion a year.

Sufferers saw a 1.3 per cent reduction in work engagement when asked about their energy, pride and enthusiasm in their job. But there was a 2.3 per cent drop for women over 50, similar to the effect of having kidney disease or high blood pressure.

Lead author Marco Hafner said: ‘Frequent visits to the bathroom at night can affect the quality of people’s sleep which can be extremely bothersome for some.

‘It can have a negative impact on their general feelings of wellness and also means they feel less engaged at work and their ability to perform at work may be impaired.

‘Doctors often overlook nocturia as a potential health problem associated with sleep loss, and patients can delay reporting the condition until it becomes unbearable and substantially affects their wellbeing.

‘Given the economic implications, this should be a wake-up call.’

The condition has also been linked to depression and cardiovascular disease. It can be treated using drugs to increase bladder capacity or regulate fluids in the body.

RAND Europe, based in Cambridge and Brussels, based the study on a questionnaire of 58,300 people.