Urination - excessive volume

Alternative Names

Home Care

You should keep track of the folllowing every day:

• How much you drink
• How often you urinate and how much urine you produce each time
• How much you weigh (use the same scale every day)

When to Contact a Medical Professional

Call your doctor if you have excessive urination over several days, and it is not explained by medications or increase in fluids.

Your health care provider will perform a physical exam and ask you questions about your medical history and symptoms, including:

• Time pattern
  • How long has you noticed this problem?
  • Do you produce the same amount of urine every day?
  • What time of day does the problem seem worse?
• Quality
  • What color is the urine?
  • Do you have blood in your urine?
  • How many times each day do you urinate? What about at night?
  • Any problems controlling urine?
• Aggravating factors
  • What makes the problem worse?
  • Does drinking large volumes of fluid make you produce more urine?
• Relieving factors
  • Does anything help relieve the problem?
  • Does restricting fluid intake reduce the urine volume?
• Other
  • What other symptoms do you have?
    • Do you have any pain or burning when urinating?
    • Do you have back or abdominal pain?
    • Have you had a fever?
    • Is bed wetting a problem?
  • What medications do you take?
  • Do you have a family history of diabetes or kidney problems?
  • Have you had a previous urinary tract infection?
• Dietary factors
  • How much do you drink every day?
  • How much caffeine do yuo have each day?
  • How much alcohol do you drink?
  • How much salt do you use each day?

Tests that may be done include:

• Urinalysis
• Serum glucose (sugar) test
• Blood urea nitrogen test
• Creatinine studies
• Fluid deprivation test (the intake of fluids is restricted to see if the urine volume decreases)
• Serum osmolality and urine osmolality tests
• Serum electrolytes