I Laughed So Hard It Made Me Pee

This really, really bothers me:

sometimes I laugh so hard I pee.

And then I need to do a dance

to keep what’s left inside my pants!

So, please do tell me, Dr. Jo,

why laughing makes me have to go—

though right before, as I recall,

I had no need to pee at all.

Most of the time, you can control

the urine that your bladder holds,

’cause at its exit, there are two

round sphincters guarding what gets through.

These rings of muscle stay shut till

the bladder really starts to fill.

Its stretching walls send signals that

will tell the brain, “It’s time to act.”

This makes one sphincter open wide

to let out all the pee inside.

The muscled bladder contracts too,

to help to push that urine through.

But nothing comes out until you

decide to open number two.

So you can hold it closed and wait

for the right time to urinate.

But once you let that sphincter go,

your urine quickly starts to flow.

And when you’re laughing, it can be

extremely hard to hold your pee.

The problem is the laughing act.

It causes muscles to contract

around your chest and abdomen,

which push your bladder, pressing in.

This pressure can be just enough

to open both the sphincters up,

which makes it very hard to keep

your urine in—and you might leak.

So even though you’re thinking, Please

don’t let me pee! and try to squeeze,

or even if you do a dance,

there’s still a chance you’ll pee your pants!

COOL FACT ABOUT URINATION

• A person, a little dog, and a big elephant all take almost the exact same amount of time to urinate: around twenty-one seconds. This may seem strange when you think about the fact that an elephant is releasing more than twenty-six gallons in one shot, while a person or a dog releases only a few cups. Gravity from the weight of all that heavy liquid helps elephants’ urine shoot out in a powerful jet. On the other hand, smaller animals like dogs, cats, and people, with much less urine to release, produce a slow, steady stream.