Originally Posted by
gforeman
Man, this is killing me. In the summer, I can easily crank two hours before having to relieve myself. When the weather is cold (less than 60 F, is cold for me), I can barely make it 30 minutes before being in pain.
I can only attribute this to not sweating it off. Problem is, I have to make sure I don't go further than my pit-stop allows. No way to go in the woods since I have to drop my drawers to go…
But I wish I had a solution.
Am I the only one with this problem?
I was gratified to read about this phenomenon a few years ago, called
“cold diuresis.” A nice explanation is provided in
Outside Magazine:
Originally Posted by Outside Magazine
What you’re experiencing is called cold diuresis, a phenomenon that occurs for reasons that are not entirely clear. One theory that remains popular—though it has been contested—explains how it works like this: When your temperature starts to drop, your body will attempt to reduce heat loss by constricting blood vessels and reducing blood flow to the surface of the skin. When that happens, your blood pressure will rise, because the same volume of blood is flowing through less space in your body. In response, your kidneys will pull out excess fluid to reduce your blood pressure, making you have to pee. “A full bladder is a place for additional heat loss, so urinating will help conserve heat,” writes Rick Curtis, the director of Princeton University’s Outdoor Action Program.
There is no set temperature that will induce cold diuresis, as age, gender, body composition, diet, and even posture can influence whether or not it will occur. In an oft-cited study from more than 60 years ago, researchers found that exercising moderately while exposed to the cold can prevent cold diuresis.
As for cold-water induced urination, researchers believe that a different mechanism may also be at play. The 2006 edition of the book Hypothermia Frostbite and Other Cold Injuries: Prevention, Recognition, and Treatment says rather than—or in addition to—urinating because your body is trying to stay warm, it’s possible that the hydrostatic pressure of the water on the skin squeezes fluid from your limbs into your core, from which it is then excreted.
Prior to googling this, I had thought that the above-described vascular constriction model was the mechanism.
Here in Massachusetts, there are stories (? urban legends) about scofflaws diuresing in public being tagged as Level I sex offenders. So one has to be careful. I live in downtown Boston, and after about 45-60 minutes riding, I'm out into suburbia where the car is king. So I'm pretty comfortable going into Dunkin Donuts or Burger King, etc. with my bike and
quickly doing my business.
I don't ask permission, and I've never been refused. I have a very expensive bike and don’t carry a lock because I don't (usually) let it out of my sight. I know there are no guarantees, but I figure in suburbia, one would not abandon their car to leave with the bike, and it would take too much time to load it into an outside vehicle. Also a cyclist is conspicuous enough in such joints that taking a bike would be a blatant act. I suppose I could roll it into the bathroom. In any case, I would not stop at a fast food joint in an urban, pedestrian neighborhood.
Just last week at one of my favorite pit stops I offered a cash token in lieu of being a paying customer, but was waved off.
