Why Diabetics Have Excessive Night Urination

Excessive night urination in people with Diabetes is a warning sign for kidney disease. The people will find themselves urinate often especially at night. Diabetes itself also causes frequent urination, but this should be distinguished from the night urinating in kidney disease. The diagnosis of kidney disease will be made based on clinical presentations as well as lab examination results.

Diabetic kidney disease is a long-term complication of Diabetes which occurs in people with Diabetes for over 5 years; the poorer diabetes is controlled, the higher risks people may get kidney disease. Diabetes, usually complicated with high blood pressure, can damage filtering cells on the kidneys. As a consequence, the patients experience an elevated amount of proteins in urine and retention of fluid in their body. Night urination occurs when renal tubules are impaired causing a decline of the dilution functions. The patients have reduced urine concentration functions, thus resulting in low osmotic pressure and low gravity urine. The night urination is different from the frequent urination caused by Diabetes.

As we have known, Diabetes is characterized by high blood glucose. The blood glucose is too high and can not be utilized properly due to insulin insufficiency. In response, the body will be forced to discharge more water together with sugar into urine, thus causing frequent urination and thirst in Diabetics. In this case, when blood glucose is controlled well, the frequent urination can be relieved, which is different from the case in kidney disease. With kidney disease, Diabetics visit toilet more often at night, and this doesn’t get better even if sugar is managed well. In addition, the kidney disease will cause other accompanying symptoms such as foamy urine, swelling in limbs, eyelids, high blood pressure, etc.

A diabetic suffering from frequent night urination or other symptoms susceptible for kidney diseases is suggested to do further lab tests to make a clear diagnosis. Kidney disease screening tests include microalbuminuria, urine osmotic pressure, urine gravity, urine NAG, urine GGT, creatinine clearance rate (Ccr), etc. Please note that your blood pressure and blood glucose should be managed now. The night urination may affect sleep quality and elevate blood glucose. So it is essential now to seek for further treatment. Anything unclear, you may email us to kidneycares@hotmail.com to get free advice from our experts.