The adults who never grow out of bedwetting

By Lucy Elkins for MailOnline
Updated: 17:42 EDT, 26 September 2011

Larry Phillips has a successful career as a financier, is happily married to his wife of 30 years and has a grown-up daughter and a teenage son.

Popular and well liked, he has a thriving social life. But his life has been over-shadowed by a secret: he is a chronic bed- wetter and five or six times a week wakes up to find his sheets are damp.

‘It’s a humiliating thing to happen, but I’ve had to learn to live with it,’ says Larry, 54, from near Epsom, Surrey.

There are several possible causes for adult bedwetting. A common cause is an 'immature' pituitary gland

‘My wife is terribly understanding  about it and always has been. Yet it has caused problems for me personally and professionally over the years.

‘It put me off going to university and has shaped my choice of job.’

However, Larry has never spoken openly about his problem with his children or friends — as he admits: ‘That would be just too embarrassing.’
Bedwetting is something we associate with young children, yet while most people grow out of it in their primary school years, a significant number do not. 

Last week, the actor Martin Clunes revealed he’d suffered with it into his early teens.

According to the Bladder And Bowel Foundation, one in 100 adults will be affected by bedwetting at some point during their lifetime. That’s about 500,000 people in the country.

For obvious reasons, adult bedwetting is not a subject that invites discussion — as Larry acknowledges, ‘it is a closet condition’. This means that sufferers could be missing out on treatment.

Bedwetting, or nocturnal enuresis, often runs in families. If one parent was a bedwetter as a child, the risk of having  a child who wets the bed rises to  40 per cent.

There are several possible causes for adult bedwetting, says Zaki Almallah, a urologist at the bladder clinic at the BMI Priory Hospital in Birmingham. A common cause is an ‘immature’ pituitary gland.

‘This gland — in the brain — helps  with the production of antidiuretic hormone,’ says Mr Almallah.

‘Normally, the gland produces more of this hormone at night and this reduces the amount of urine made, so we are not woken in the early hours of the morning by a need to use the toilet.

'Without an adequate amount of this hormone, urine production continues as normal and so the risk of bedwetting increases.

‘This is commonly why children wet the bed, as their pituitary gland is not mature enough to produce the right level of this hormone. However, this can happen in adults, too.’

He adds that in some cases, the problem is that the bedwetter is a very deep sleeper.

‘They do not wake up even when their bladder is full,’ says Mr Almallah.

Martin Clunes suffered with bedwetting into his early teens

Another cause is an overactive bladder — this means that the bladder spasms when it is just slightly full, causing bedwetting.

‘Many adult bed-wetters will have a combination of all three of these to some extent,’ he says.

‘The longer it continues, the more entrenched it becomes as  a habit.’

If bedwetting begins suddenly in adulthood, it is normally the result of another underlying condition, such as diabetes, heart failure, nerves, prostate problems, muscle problems or, in rare circumstances,  a cancerous growth in the prostate or bladder.

For this reason, adult bed- wetting should always be investigated by a GP.

‘In some cases, there can be  a psychological element, too,’ says Dr Helen Nightingale, who runs a clinic on the Isle of Man and is a spokeswoman for the British Psychological Society.

‘Emotional distress makes the body more tense and this may cause bedwetting among adults.’

Larry has not experienced any trauma and doctors have not found any underlying conditions. He wet the bed as a child and simply never grew out of it.

‘I was conscious I wet the bed and my younger sister didn’t, but my mum was blasé about it and didn’t take me to a doctor until I was in my late teens,’ he says.

‘It was not until I was in my 30s that mum admitted that she, too, had been a bedwetter until she was in her late teens.

‘She grew out of it and  thought I would, too — which is why she didn’t take me to the doctor sooner.’

Larry was given a bedwetting alarm in his teens, which has  a sensor that detects when  the wearer is starting to wet  the bed.

This is a standard medical treatment that works by conditioning, so the sufferer gets used to waking up when they have the urge to go.

When this didn’t help, Larry was also prescribed desmopressin. Available as a spray or tablet taken at night, this works like  the antidiuretic hormone, reducing the amount of urine produced during this time.

‘This does not work for everyone, but it is successful in  about 70 per cent of cases,’ says Mr Almallah.

Unfortunately, Larry wasn’t one of them.

‘When I hit 18, I started to get really worried about it and went back to the doctor. But he said there was nothing more he could do,’ says Larry.

‘I wonder if the fact that I am such as deep sleeper — I never wake during the night — is to blame and that now this is an unbreakable habit.’

Larry says his wife was very understanding the first time that it happened when they were  sharing a bed.

‘I made out that it was something that occurred now and again,’ says Larry.

‘She was really nice about it.

‘But in the early stages of our marriage it became clear that it was a nightly problem.

‘When I admitted to her the  full extent of the problem she  was much happier, and as a result I think it made our marriage much stronger.’

Others have not always been so understanding.

‘I have to travel a bit for work and a few years ago I was attending a business conference,’  says Larry.

‘The chambermaid of the hotel I was staying in left my room  door open and yelled ‘‘The  man in room number 130 has wet the bed,’’ just as a group of colleagues were walking past. I was mortified.

‘I have since left that company and a former colleague later told me the news went round the office like wildfire.’

Now, he has bravely decided to talk about the condition to raise awareness of adult bedwetting and to encourage other sufferers to realise that they are not alone.

‘I have managed to make contact with about 30 other sufferers over the years, but there are a lot of people out there who tell no one what they are going through,’ he says.

Some of the people I know have lost relationships and so many opportunities in their life because of this condition.

‘I have tried to make sure my bedwetting has not ruled my life. My attitude has been: “OK, so I can’t conquer this problem — I am a life-long bed-wetter — but I am going to compensate for this by being determined and achieving as much as I can.”

And that’s what I have done.’

Larry has set up a social network for fellow sufferers — email adultbedwetting@btinternet.com