Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms are a group of urinary symptoms that can be triggered by a blockage, abnormality, or infection of the urethra, bladder, urinary sphincter, or prostate (in men).

What Are Lower Urinary Tract Symptoms?

Lower urinary tract symptoms fall into different categories. These may be:

Storage symptoms

Storage symptoms involve difficulty keeping urine in your bladder. These symptoms include:

• Urgency: Urgency to urinate, so you rush to the bathroom.
• Frequency: Frequency which is when you are going very often.
• Urgency urinary incontinence: Urgency urinary incontinence is when you have a leakage of urine. This leakage happens because of the sudden desire to go, but you can’t make it to the bathroom in time.

Voiding symptoms

These occur when you have issues emptying your bladder. This problem is, unfortunately, a widespread occurrence for older men.  These symptoms include:

• Intermittent stream

• Straining to urinate

• Incomplete bladder emptying

The number of times that you wake up to urinate also plays a role in lower urinary tract symptoms. If you find yourself waking up more than once throughout the night to urinate it is considered abnormal. This issue stems from several problems, including overactive bladder, benign prostatic hyperplasia, or an enlarged prostate. Many things can contribute to this, but those are the two most common causes.