Urinary tract infections (UTI’s) are extremely common, affecting 11% of women over the age of 18 at least once a year and are most common between the ages of 8-24. UTI’s have a great tendency to recur. Recurrent UTI’s are defined as 3 episodes within the last 12 months or 2 episodes within the last 6 months.
Treatment of UTI’s with antibiotics causes antibiotic resistance and sets the stage for the next UTI. If you’re not careful and you keep treating the UTI with one antibiotic after another, you might wind up with recurrent episodes of UTI’s. In fact this has happened to so many women that alternative ways of treating these infections are thankfully emerging.
Natasha Trenev, founder and owner of Natren Probiotic company, who makes some of the best probiotics on the market is quoted as saying, “Antibiotics were to the 20th century what probiotics are to the 21st century.”
And she is so correct! If you keep trying to kill infection in the bladder by using antibiotics, you will wipe out the delicate strains of probiotic cultures which reside there. And it turns out that it is depletion of probiotic cultures that causes the bacterial infection to grow in the first place. And it also turns out that the best way to treat an infection is with the use of probiotics.
Under normal circumstances, with robust growth of the friendly bacteria, any infection that tries to reside in the gut, the vaginal tract or the bladder will be killed off by the strains of friendly bacteria growing in these areas. However, the use of antibiotics, birth control pills, immunizations, steroids and acid reflux medicines wipe out these delicate flora, allowing infection to grow.
So if you start growing infections in any of these 3 areas you should definitely start regrowing your friendly bacteria to prevent future infections.
I have seen scores of patients develop so many bladder infections that the urologist recommended just staying on antibiotics for the longterm, to prevent future infections from taking hold. This is definitely not the way to go! Your health will spiral downhill as you keep depleting the bladder’s friendly bacteria.
It turns out that the lining of the bladder, aside from the muscular layer which contracts when you release urine, is basically made up of a mucus layer with the friendly bacteria growing in it. Directly under these layers are nerves that supply the bladder muscles.
Now, if you take repeated doses of antibiotics for recurring UTI’s, you will not only destroy the friendly bacteria but the delicate mucus layer as well. And if you keep getting one infection after the other, followed by one antibiotic after the other, there is a great chance that you might wear out the mucus layer to the point where constant inflammation starts to take hold from so many repeated infections, which creates pain in and of itself. But then if the delicate nerve tissue in the mucus layer gets inflamed then you can experience severe wrenching pain. This situation is known as Interstitial Cystitis.
I have treated hundreds of women with Interstitial Cystitis and many of them have a history of repeated UTI’s being treated over and over with antibiotics until the infections became resistant to the antibiotics and a constant state of inflammation kicked in, resulting in severe pain and misery.
But there is a way out. In my practice we regrow the friendly bacteria in the gut using specific probiotic cultures that reside there and different probiotic cultures for the types of flora that grow in the bladder. Then we give herbal teas to gently rebuild the mucus layer. And we are very lucky in that we have specialized rare Ayurvedic herbs to heal the painful inflammation in the nerves of the bladder.
During the several months it takes to rebuild the mucus layer and the friendly bacteria in the bladder (and gut), we have the patient avoid any foods which might break down the mucus layer even more, especially foods which contain heat or acids, such as tomato sauce, and other tomato products, onions, garlic, coffee and tea, alcohol, citrus fruits, soda, hot and spicy foods and chocolate.
We also make sure the patient eats plenty of ghee, which aids in healing the mucus layer of the bladder (and gut) and seals up the leaky gut which can also occur with frequent rounds of antibiotics.
And while usually cranberry juice is recommended to prevent bladder infections, it is not recommended in the case of interstitial cystitis, as the acids in the cranberries hurt the very raw and inflamed lining of the bladder wall.
Make sure you drink a good alkaline water, such as Fiji, Iceland, Icelandic Glacial, Evian, Mountain Valley to name a few. Most tap water in the country nowadays is acidic due to the acid rain.
Lauki squash, yellow squash and green zucchini are very alkalinizing and cooling to the bladder lining.
In addition to these specific treatments, you have to also take into consideration that the bile must be flowing properly out of the gall bladder. The bile neutralizes the stomach acids as they squirt into the duodenum, which is the beginning of the small intestines. It’s important that the digestive juices turn alkaline once they come out of the acidic environment in the stomach because once they absorb into the digestive tract from the small intestines they go into the bloodstream. And at some point the blood becomes urine.
This is why it is critical that the gall bladder bile always flows to alkalinize not only the digestive juices but the blood and urine as well. If your urine is too acidic it can burn out the friendly bacteria and the delicate mucus membranes of the bladder, resulting in infection and inflammation. For more information on this listen to my video on the gallbladder.
And if you are nervous, anxious or worried your food could turn into acids very quickly once you eat them. So try to learn natural ways to help you deal with stress so that you don’t create acidity in the digestive tract, which will ultimately become hot acidic urine.
It’s important that each patient be evaluated individually to see exactly what is causing the burning of the bladder lining, as the causes are slightly different in each patient and there is usually more than one underlying cause in each case.
But at least now you know: don’t go down the path of using repeated doses of antibiotics for UTI’s or you could wind up with a situation of chronic inflammation and pain as your bladder lining suffers the ill effects of losing both its friendly bacteria and the mucus layer.
Try to break the habit of the frequent UTI’s by supplementing with high quality probiotics specifically made for the bladder and learn how to heal the bladder lining using herbs, ghee and foods based on your own unique imbalances.
I hope this information will save you from months or years of suffering with Interstitial Cystitis. It is fairly easy to prevent this very painful condition if you nip it in the bud in its very early stages.
Thank you,