Buzz
Reader Bill contacted us with a question, 'Why does the sound of running water make me want to pee, sometimes quite urgently?'
The curious feeling of needing to pee when we hear sounds like rainstorms, waterfalls, or babbling brooks appears to be linked to the psychological effect of suggestion.
Most of you likely recognize the name Pavlov, who is associated with dogs. Specifically, he conducted an experiment demonstrating how autonomic responses (involuntary reflexes controlled by the autonomic nervous system) can be triggered by external stimuli.
Dog owners know well that when a dog gets its paws on a piece of meat, it often leads to a flood of saliva. In Pavlov's famous experiment, he presented dogs with meat powder, which made them salivate, just after ringing a bell. After several months of repetition, Pavlov could ring the bell without any meat powder, and the dogs would salivate because they had learned to link the bell with food. For another example of classical conditioning, check out this clip from The Office.
Pavlov believed that much of this automatic and subconscious learning occurs in everyday life, and you can likely recall instances where you reflexively respond to an unrelated stimulus. The urge to pee when hearing running water seems to be a similar type of conditioned response. The sound of water not only resembles the sound of urination, forming a Pavlovian connection, but sounds like flushing and hand-washing are also linked to urinating and further reinforce the association.
The catch is, this theory remains hypothetical at this stage. While many urologists and psychologists support this idea, and have discussed it in respected journals like The New England Journal of Medicine, there's no published, peer-reviewed research confirming the exact cause behind the water-pee link. Still, it's undeniable for many people, even though the underlying reason is yet to be fully understood.
Numerous nursing, psychology, and parenting guides recommend using running water for a variety of situations such as potty-training toddlers, assisting those with paruresis (shy bladder), and helping patients recovering from prostate surgery who may struggle to urinate without assistance. In the early 1970s, one New York hospital even provided select patients with a tape recorder and headphones, playing a 30-minute recording of water sounds to improve their bathroom experience. Dubbed the 'audio catheter,' it was a hit among the patients and proved to be a great success.
