Most children wet the bed until they are three or four. Thereafter about 25 per cent of children continue to wet the bed, and some may also wet themselves during the day. In some children, this may continue until they are ten or more. Sometimes a urinary infection causes bed-wetting, and so can diabetes. However, in the vast majority of cases, the cause is probably psychological, with anxiety or insecurity at the root of the problem.

In many children with food sensitivity, bed-wetting has unexpectedly stopped when they were treated for other symptoms, and recurred, along with those other symptoms, when certain foods were reintroduced.

At first this was put down to coincidence, but most doctors now accept that food sensitivity (either allergy or intolerance) can cause bed-wetting.

It probably does so by making smooth muscles throughout the body contract. As well as being found in the bronchi (where their spasms can cause asthma) and the bowels (where they can cause diarrhoea), smooth muscles make up the wall of the bladder. If they contract excessively, the bladder empties much more frequently, and with less control.

Some adults with food sensitivity have to empty their bladder very frequently, and the mechanism is probably the same.

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