Do Fizzy Drinks or Sparkling Water Make Bladder Urgency Worse?

Lists of “bladder irritants” almost always include fizzy drinks. The evidence behind that advice is thinner than the lists suggest, so here it is at its size.

The study behind the advice

The Leicestershire MRC Incontinence Study mailed surveys and food questionnaires to a random sample of women aged 40 and over living at home: 7,046 answered, and 6,424 answered again a year later.¹

• New urgency symptoms (overactive bladder) were more likely in women who drank carbonated drinks, smoked or had obesity. More vegetables, bread and chicken went with lower risk.¹
• New stress leaks, the kind with coughs and sneezes, were also linked with carbonated drinks and with obesity.¹

What it can’t tell you

• It’s one observational study using questionnaires, so it shows a link, not proof that fizz caused anything.¹
• “Carbonated drinks” is one group in the abstract. It doesn’t say whether plain seltzer behaves like cola or sweetened soda.¹
• The wider evidence is sparse. A 2017 review of 111 studies called the evidence on diet “sparse and mostly observational,” and noted only one cohort linking carbonated drinks with new stress leaks.² The stronger links in that review were for fluid amount and caffeine with frequency and urgency.²

Where caffeine hides in fizz

If your fizzy drink is a cola or an energy drink, caffeine may matter more than the bubbles. The FDA lists 23 to 83 mg in a 12-ounce caffeinated soft drink and 41 to 246 mg in a 12-ounce energy drink, and packaged foods must list caffeine in their ingredients.³ See caffeine and bladder leaks: how much matters.

We didn’t find a study testing artificial sweeteners against bladder urgency. They may bother some women and not others.

Test it on yourself

1. Keep a bladder diary for 3 days, noting each drink, whether it’s fizzy, caffeinated or sweetened, and when urges and leaks happen. See five details for a bladder diary.
2. Change one thing for a week, for example swapping soda for still water, and compare the urge column.
3. Don’t cut water to cope. Rationing fluids has its own problems: see three checks before restricting fluids and why you have to pee so often.

Try: “I drink two or three cans of soda a day and get sudden urges to go. Could cutting them help, and should I keep a bladder diary before our next visit?”

Laugh, Sneeze, Jump covers this in Chapter 7, in a section called “Coffee, Fizz, and the Water You Didn’t Drink.” Its Three-Day Read has a drink column: add up roughly how much you drank, note when, and mark the caffeinated and fizzy ones so you can line them up against urges and leaks. See the book.