So how does the urinary tract work? Well, we start the urinary tract with the kidneys. That’s where the urine is produced. After the kidneys produce the urine, it travels into the renal pelvis, which is the collecting system for the kidney. That’s up at the kidney level. Then it drops down a tube called the ureter and it enters the bladder. This happens on both sides of your body, so you have two kidneys and they both drain into one bladder that sits in your pelvis. After the urine collects, you start getting the sensation that you may need to urinate, or pee, and then you would visit the bathroom.

Ordinarily, men and women go to the bathroom, they have no issues emptying, but as we age, and specifically in men, they can run into issues with their urinary stream. What we like to see is for the bladder to be able to empty without having to wait at the toilet for too long a period of time, and so if you’re able to urinate without having to wait, we say that you don’t really have hesitancy. And as you pee, the urine comes out the urethra. In a man, it comes out the penis, which houses the urethra, and in a woman, the urethra exits the top part of the vagina. In a man, as you urinate, it’s a higher pressure when you pee. The bladder has to produce a larger pressure in a man than a woman because we have to push the urine past the prostate, and women, who don’t have prostates, they always urinate at a lower pressure, so there’s a difference in the physiology, what we call physiology, of how a man and a woman urinate.

I hope that helps, I hope that clarifies kind of where the urine is made in the kidneys, how the ureter, the tube that drains the kidney to the bladder, works, and then in the bladder, how the bladder stores and then evacuates that urine from the bladder. If you’re having urinary issues and you would like to talk to a urologist, please visit us on our website at northwoodsurology.com or call me to schedule an appointment. Again, I’m Russell Libby with Northwoods Urology of Texas. Thanks for watching.