How to Manage Overactive Bladder: A Diet That Changed My Life

Overactive bladder.

 

It’s a symptom that comes to some people as they age.

But for me, it started showing up in my mid-30s, one day out of the blue. Isn’t that too early?

Seriously, I began running to the bathroom once every hour, more than 12 times a day. At night, waking up 2-3 times became the norm, and from that point on, my happiness index in life plummeted.

It just… felt like my daily life was being destroyed.

I’ve always been someone who navigated life’s challenges on my own, breaking through every obstacle without fail. So, as usual, I started self-diagnosing this issue and quickly arrived at a conclusion.

Self-diagnosis: Abdominal obesity.

Reason for bladder sensitivity: Excessive visceral fat expanding and pressing on my bladder, making it feel full even with the slightest amount of urine.
Solution: Eliminate abdominal fat to restore the shrunken bladder to its original shape.

Having reached what I thought was a rational conclusion, I sprang into action.

Action plan: Drastically cut carbs (almost completely avoiding grains), reduce meat intake, and replace meals with an extreme grape diet.

I stuck to this for days, waiting for my overactive bladder to resolve.

But this method didn’t last long—it was forcibly halted by an outside force.

 

Transcendent intervention of God

I’m not the type to enjoy bowing my head and receiving prayers from others, but by chance, I attended a service at an L.A. church. It was during my days as a poor, cold, and hungry international student, as I recall.

There, I received a prayer from a deaconess I’d never met before, a complete stranger. Yet, in the middle of her prayer, she suddenly said this:

‘God is asking you, my brother… “My beloved son, why aren’t you eating? Why aren’t you eating meat? He says to eat all kinds of food—rice, meat, everything—without restriction.”‘

She had no idea about my life or background, so she couldn’t have known the context of that message. But inside, I felt a wave of overwhelming emotion welling up. Oh… God has been watching over my life this closely… It was a moment, like Job’s confession, where I felt I’d seen with my own eyes the God I’d only heard about before. Not a distant, transcendent God far off in the cosmos, but a God who is with me, walking beside me, guiding my path step by step. Though I’ve had other moments of experiencing God since then, few have revealed His love and grace in my life as concretely and directly as this one.

Anyway, following the will of my Creator, I immediately stopped the extreme grape diet. Of course, I prayed for healing during that time, but God didn’t resolve the issue through a miraculous method. Looking back now, though, I can confess that He ultimately provided a way out, as I’ve since overcome my overactive bladder without relying on any medication.

At the time, I visited a doctor and got a prescription. As a broke international student without insurance, the doctor gave me a month’s worth of sample medication. It worked instantly, but the next month, I couldn’t afford the $100+ out-of-pocket cost, so the symptoms persisted.

Then one day…

An article caught my eye—an article about overactive bladder.

It discussed various causes, and surprisingly, the first one mentioned was food.

Ah… How could someone in IT like me not have thought to look this up until now? And what did they mean by food? What on earth was I eating that caused this mess?

Then, one food came to mind crystal clear.

My all-time favorite: Pho.

 

The culprit was Pho. The main source, the root, the beginning and end of my suffering over the past few years—it was Pho. Or, to be precise, it was the Sriracha sauce mixed with onions. Because the main ingredient in that sauce? Red jalapeño peppers. I’d been eating Pho—my beloved dish—three or more times a week for years, dousing it with massive amounts of jalapeño-laden sauce each time. That fiery sauce went straight to my bladder, accumulating and irritating it over time.

Yes, that’s it… I started eating Pho after coming to the U.S., and exactly three years later, my overactive bladder symptoms exploded.

It was heartbreaking, but as I began letting go of my favorite delicacy, Pho, the illness tormenting me slowly started to fade. Still, there were times when the symptoms flared up again.

More hidden Triggers

Eventually, I identified two more foods that triggered it:

First, coffee. Second, alcohol.

After that, I gave up the sake I enjoyed with meals, swore off wine, and cut back on coffee. When I had to drink it, I stuck to decaf—caffeine-free coffee. Even then, I noticed that drinking decaf daily still worsened my overactive bladder symptoms.

Now, 20 years later, by keeping my distance from Pho, coffee, and alcohol, I’ve managed to live mostly free from the overactive bladder that added such misery to my younger days.

I hope this story helps everyone reading it…”

 

 

Constipation or shingles