Two questions: coffee and soups

1: Caffine is a diuretic, so it make you go a lot, and can dehydrate you. decaf may help, but if you are still taking in the same amount of liquid, you will probably still be going often

2. If you are not adding broth to your dish, but it is making its own broth instead, I would not add broth to your food diary, as it is sort of already included in your meat/veg naturally.

Hope that makes sense and helps!

When you first start drinking alot of water you will have to pee often.... but then your body will adjust. I'm now back to a regular pee schedule, but at first I did have to go about every 30 minutes. Took about 2 weeks to get back to normal urinary habits. Also, I think limiting my sodium helps too.

Try not to take big gulps of water at once, little sips. Or if you are going to tank up - do it 15-20 minutes before your break, so when the break comes your kidneys will have your bladder ready to go about the time your break rolls around and you won't have to hold it and be too uncomfortable for too long. :drinker:

I can appreciate your problem, because I am being treated for bladder cancer and thus have to go pretty much every 20 minutes. It comes on quickly and I often don't make it in time. The worst thing is when someone stops me on the way to the bathroom to ask a question or chat. I am not a teacher, and can go pretty much whenever I want, but I rarely get there without being stopped on the way. And I almost never make it to the bathroom in time when shopping in a department store or a supermarket. The underpant type of Depends has been very helpful as the maximum absorbency variety will hold a full bladder if I need it. It's not comfortable, but it's better than wetting your pants in the asile in the supermarket, or in the hallway at work!

Personally, cutting out caffeine has not helped this problem, though it has helped me sleep better, and increasing water absolutely MAKES IT WORSE. My oncologist/urologist informs me that the water in food and flavored beverages are JUST AS GOOD as plain water at hydration, and there is no need to drink more than 64 ounces of water from any source in a day, and that includes beverages like coffee and tea, and things like soup and jello unless you are sweating a lot from exercise. Exercise does call for an immediate replacement of water lost to sweating and breathing hard. You should watch the calories in sugar sweetened beverages, but not for hydration reasons. He also says that additional water loss from caffeine is negligible. I know this flies in the face of what we're told, but this doctor is a nationally recognized expert in the urinary system, and he says there is lots of experimental evidence that this is so.

I say do whatever you have to do. If that's getting your doctor to write a note saying you need bathroom breaks more often than every 45 minutes, then do it. This would be an Americans with Disabilities Act Reasonable Accomodation, and there has to be a way for the school to get someone to cover for you twice during each period. My urologist does recommend peeing on a schedule so you never have to go really badly. I try to keep to an every 20 minute schedule, and my employer has a doctor's note that explains that I have a need to do this.