Parents often ask whether vitamins or supplements can help with bedwetting.
Over the past few years, researchers have been looking more closely at vitamin D, vitamin B12, folate and omega-3 in children who wet the bed.
Some of the findings have been surprising.
In this article, we’ll look at what the latest research says, which nutrients have the strongest evidence, and what it could mean for your child.
Please note: I am not a medical professional. This article is based on published research and is intended for educational purposes only. If you are concerned your child may have a vitamin deficiency, please speak with your GP or healthcare provider before starting supplements.
As your child’s bladder fills during the night, it sends messages to the brain. The brain then needs to recognise those messages and decide what to do next.
The brain has two options:
This is what I often describe as brain–bladder communication. For this communication to work well, the brain, nerves and muscles need to develop and function normally. This is one reason researchers have become interested in nutrients such as vitamin D, vitamin B12 and folate, which all play important roles in nervous-system function.
The question researchers are trying to answer is quite simple:
Could low levels of some vitamins make it harder for the brain and bladder to communicate effectively at night?
Research is still developing, but several studies have now found links between vitamin levels and bedwetting.
Vitamin D has received more attention than any other nutrient in recent years. Several studies have found that children who wet the bed are more likely to have low vitamin D levels than children who stay dry.
One of the largest studies, published in 2024, measured vitamin D levels in 288 children with primary nocturnal enuresis (bedwetting).
The researchers found:
In other words, almost 8 out of 10 children in this study had vitamin D levels below the normal range. The researchers also noticed another interesting pattern. Children with lower vitamin D levels tended to wet the bed more often than children with higher vitamin D levels.
This study found a clear link between low vitamin D levels and more frequent bedwetting. That led researchers to an important question:
If a child has low vitamin D, could correcting the deficiency improve their bedwetting?
Researchers have now carried out two clinical trials to help answer that question.
In the first study, published in 2018, 44.4% of children taking vitamin D stopped wetting the bed after two months. This was a higher success rate than the children taking omega-3 alone.
A second randomised clinical trial, published in 2026, looked at children who all had low vitamin D levels. The researchers compared a bedwetting alarm on its own with a bedwetting alarm plus vitamin D. The children who received vitamin D had better outcomes overall, adding further support to the idea that correcting a vitamin D deficiency may improve bedwetting in some children.
Taken together, these studies suggest that vitamin D is worth considering as one possible piece of the bedwetting puzzle, particularly if a child is found to have low vitamin D levels.
Vitamin B12 is another nutrient that researchers have been looking at more closely.
Vitamin B12 plays an important role in the healthy development and function of the nervous system, making it especially relevant when we think about brain and bladder communication.
The same 2024 study also measured vitamin B12 levels in 288 children with bedwetting.
The researchers found that:
Although the link was not as strong as it was for vitamin D, it was still strong enough for researchers to investigate further.
A second study, published in 2025, looked at 150 children whose bedwetting had not improved despite following the usual first-line treatment and advice, including regular toilet visits, drinking enough during the day and establishing healthy bladder and bowel habits. The researchers measured vitamin B12, vitamin D, folate and ferritin levels.
They found:
This study is particularly interesting because these children had already tried the usual first-line approaches without enough improvement. After their low vitamin levels were identified and treated, 77.6% improved to fewer than two wet nights per week without needing desmopressin, a medication commonly used to reduce the amount of urine produced overnight. Of the children who improved, around 80% became completely dry.
The study does have limitations. The children continued the same bladder and bowel routines while taking the supplements, and there was no placebo group. So we cannot say how much of the improvement came from correcting the vitamin deficiencies alone.
Even so, the very high rate of low vitamin B12 in this group gives researchers a strong reason to keep investigating the link between B12 and bedwetting.
Folate has also been studied, but the findings are less consistent. A 2023 study found significantly lower folate levels in children with bedwetting, while the 2025 study of 150 children found no folate deficiency at all. The findings are mixed, so researchers are still trying to understand whether folate has a meaningful role in bedwetting.
Omega-3 plays an important role in brain development and healthy nerve function, so researchers have also looked at whether it could help with bedwetting.
A well-designed study published in 2018 followed 180 children aged 7 to 15 for two months.
The children were randomly placed into four groups and given:
The researchers found that:
Interestingly, combining omega-3 with vitamin D did not improve the results beyond vitamin D alone.
Interestingly, combining omega-3 with vitamin D did not improve the results beyond vitamin D alone. Omega-3 helped some children, with 28.2% stopping bedwetting after two months. Vitamin D worked better in this study. We still need more research to know how helpful omega-3 may be for bedwetting.
You may have seen saffron promoted on Facebook as a possible cure for bedwetting. Saffron has been studied in relation to sleep in adults and ADHD symptoms in some children, but these findings do not show that it treats bedwetting. There are currently no good-quality clinical trials showing that saffron can reduce or cure bedwetting in children.
Parents should speak with their GP or paediatrician before giving saffron or any concentrated herbal supplement to a child. If your child has tried saffron for bedwetting and you’ve seen a difference, please let me know in the comments.
If the research on vitamins sounds promising, you might be wondering why your GP or paediatrician hasn’t mentioned it. One reason is that much of the research is still quite new, with several key studies only published in the past few years.
Medical guidelines also take time to change. Before new recommendations are added, researchers usually want to see similar results repeated in several good-quality studies. Routine vitamin testing is not currently part of the standard assessment for every child who wets the bed.
If your child’s bedwetting is persisting, or they are already having a blood test for another reason, you may want to ask your GP whether checking their vitamin D and vitamin B12 levels would be appropriate.
Over the years, I’ve found it helpful to think of bedwetting as a jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes there is just one missing piece, and once you find it, the bedwetting stops. For other children, several contributing factors may need to be identified before things improve. These might include constipation, mouth breathing, drinking before bed, bladder habits, sleep, delayed brain and bladder communication, and more.
As we’ve seen, newer research suggests vitamin deficiencies may also be relevant for some children. The key is to understand what can contribute to bedwetting and work out which factors are most likely to matter for your child.
That’s exactly how the Stay Dry at Night program is designed. It takes you through the different causes, triggers and solutions step by step, with a clear week-by-week plan to help you work out what may be contributing to your child’s bedwetting. You’ll also have help and support along the way as you work towards dry nights.
For some children with a vitamin deficiency, they may. Research suggests that correcting a vitamin deficiency may help some children become dry at night. At the moment, the most promising evidence is for vitamin D, with growing research around vitamin B12. The research on omega-3 is promising but still limited, while the findings for folate are mixed.
If your child is already having a blood test for another reason, you could ask whether it would be appropriate to check their vitamin D and vitamin B12 levels at the same time.
As researchers continue to learn more about why children wet the bed, it’s becoming clear that nutrition may be another piece of the puzzle for some families. It won’t be the answer for every child, but it’s another area worth discussing with your healthcare provider if bedwetting has been difficult to resolve.
We’d love to hear from you. Has correcting a vitamin deficiency or changing your child’s diet made a difference to their bedwetting? Share your experience in the comments below.
Ye Z, Luo X, Chen H, et al. (2026). Efficacy and Safety of High-Dose Vitamin D Supplementation Combined With an Enuresis Alarm vs Alarm Alone in Children With Primary Monosymptomatic Nocturnal Enuresis: A Randomized Clinical Trial. Journal of Urology.
Agar B, et al. (2025). A Novel Approach to the Management of Children with Primary Nocturnal Enuresis. Children.
Gulyuz A. (2025). Relationship between serum vitamin B12 levels and primary monosymptomatic nocturnal enuresis: A prospective case-control study. Journal of Pediatric Urology.
Ibrahim HAA, Menshawy SS, Hassan FE. (2024). Vitamin D and vitamin B12 profiles in children with primary nocturnal enuresis, an analytical cross-sectional study. Annals of Medicine.
Kompani F, Barati L, Mehrjerdian M, Vakili M, Nodehsharifi A. (2023). Folic Acid and Vitamin B12 Deficiency, Two New Findings in Pediatric Enuresis. Iranian Journal of Pediatrics, 33(2), e129308.
Rahmani E, Eftekhari MH, Fallahzadeh MH, Fararouei M, Massoumi SJ. (2018). Effect of vitamin D and omega-3 on nocturnal enuresis of 7-15-year-old children. Journal of Pediatric Urology, 14(3), 257.e1-257.e6.
Ginny Laver BA (Hons), MSc, NLP, Dip. THP is a Clinical Hypnotherapist and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner who specialises in helping children learn how to stop bedwetting naturally.
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