Is it possible to effectively treat urinary tract infection naturally without having to resort to antibiotics? We will cover these questions and more in the interesting and most comprehensive article about urinary tract infections, otherwise known as UTI. The other term commonly used is cystitis, and what we really mean is an infection of the bladder, but the term cystitis is often used indiscriminately and it really covers a wide range lower urinary tract infections and irritations.
Is it possible to treat urinary tract infection naturally and effectively without having to resort to antibiotics? We will cover these questions and more in the interesting and most comprehensive article about urinary tract infections, otherwise known as UTI.
The other term commonly used is cystitis, and what we really mean is an infection of the bladder, but the term cystitis is often used indiscriminately and it really covers a wide range lower urinary tract infections and irritations. Urinary Tract infection can be quite uncomfortable indeed, because it causes burning sensations during urination and a often times includes a frequent need to urinate.
Most probably the most frequent cause of cystitis is an infection from intestinal bacteria, and this is particularly the case with women according to the Mayo Clinic, because they have a much shorter urethra (this is the tube through which the urine passes from the bladder to the outside of the body). In most all cases, your urine is sterile (and there will be no micro-organisms present such as bacteria). According to the Journal of Urology, approximately 60% of women will experience symptomatic acute bacterial cystitis in their lifetime, frequently denoted as a UTI. An estimated 20-40% of women who have had one previous cystitis episode are likely to experience an additional episode, 25-50% of whom will experience multiple recurrent episodes.
With the elderly, it is possible to have bacteria in the bladder having no symptoms. I have seen this in older patients over the years. There can be several reasons bacteria settling in the bladder in the older person, and here are a few of the main reasons:
Even the smallest drop of urine (which is always left behind) may contain bacteria, and conditions that may make it easier for the bacteria to travel through the urethra include those listed below.
According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, A UTI develops when microbes enter the urinary tract and cause infection. Bacteria are the most common cause of UTIs, although fungi (Candida) can also infect the urinary tract. E. coli bacteria, which live in the bowel, cause most UTIs.
Here is a list of the most common causes of a urinary tract infection. This list is not complete, but you will find just about all the most common causes listed here. There are many potential causes of a UTI, and most times I’ve found stress to be a part of the cause because it undermines a person’s immune system, making them more vulnerable to acute infections.
The symptoms of a urinary tract infection can vary from person to person, but here is a list of the most likely and common symptoms you will find.
It is important to drink water sufficiently. This will flush your bladder thoroughly. Emptying your bladder completely during urination is important. It is a bad habit to sit on the toilet bent forward and reading while urinating. A trick is to place yourself backwards on the toilet, so you lean against the wall. This posture is more suitable in securing a complete emptying of the bladder than the usual sitting posture. Warm clothes on the lower part of the body will also help prevent cystitis.
As a prevention, it may be helpful to drink cranberry juice every day or take capsules. This simple treatment may help to reduce the frequency of recurrent infections. We think the cranberry juice works by preventing common bacteria from ‘sticking’ to the walls of the bladder and so preventing infection taking hold. Urination immediately after sexual intercourse will flush out most bacteria from the urethra. Try to urinate at least once every three hours. Women who avoid urination for long periods suffer from more infections of the urinary system.
Urinary tract infections would have to be one of the more common reasons a woman will go to her chemist to seek a resolution for a condition rather than her doctor. There are various pharmaceutical drugs your pharmacist will recommend treating cystitis, and they will be recommended unless a woman is experiencing blood in her urine or is vomiting.
If she is pregnant with a UTI, they will ask her to check in with her doctor or report this to her midwife as soon as possible. Usually, a single course of treatment is offered and this will clear up the condition, but if symptoms persist even after trying the OTC (over-the-counter) drug, she will be told to consult her doctor. According the The Lancet, antibiotic treatments, however, can have a dramatic effect on the microbiome.
This is easy to explain. Your medical doctor will pick up your case of a UTI just by your presenting signs and symptoms. Your urine will be tested with a dipstick (which takes seconds) and they will take a specimen to a laboratory where it will be cultured to see which bacteria grow in it.
The doctor will want a fresh urine sample, and it is important for the woman to remember this fresh urine sample is easily contaminated with bacteria from the skin around the vagina. To avoid this occurring, the labia are best separated during this brief urination and the area wiped/cleaned first. If there is any inflammation or redness in the area, your doctor can readily identify any red or white blood cells with another dipstick test.
Your doctor will most probably want to prescribe antibiotics in this case, whilst he or she awaits the results of the urine test. This will also show whether the antibiotic is sensitive to the specific bacteria or whether there is any resistant bacteria which is not going to respond to the antibiotic. But what happens if you get a recurrent UTI you ask? Your doctor may in such a case refer you to a specialist who will perform ultrasound scanning or even an X-ray of the urinary system and perhaps a cystoscopy, an examination of the bladder with a minuscule camera.
Here is some dietary advice, advice on the best nutritional supplements and also the best herbal medicines to use in case of a urinary tract infection. I’ve been treating patients for almost thirty years and in most cases, an antibiotic is unnecessary, especially if you treat any minor urinary disturbances at once. As they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a lot more than a pound of cure. Once you start on the recurring drug merry-go-round to “cure” cystitis, you may well end up like a lot of women I’ve seen and develop a female yeast infection.
The three principal remedies I’d like you to get if you regularly experience UTIs are:
This is good if you travel and only want to take something small in your handbag. This can be just what you need when you go away on holidays for a week or two to prevent a UTI. It will work, avoid alcohol,nNo cheating. Take a small amount of D-Mannose powder with you, use it (as below) at the very first sign of even the slightest irritation down there. Keep taking it until the irritation stops.
This is an excellent treatment if you have only had a UTI once or twice and not recurrent. New studies show that with Vitamin C, ascorbic acid irritates the bladder, thus we must get Vitamin C as calcium ascorbate, which is relatively buffered. Avoid vitamins containing any aspartate, as it is a bladder irritant. Try a Vitamin C powder that is PH balanced and in a buffered form already – it is absolutely perfect for those with a urinary tract infection. Try it and see, you will be on top of this complaint in no time.
This is your best solution if you have recurrent and chronic UTI problems.
This is one of my favourite dietary supplements to recommend for a UTI, and by taking one teaspoon dissolved in a glass of water daily it can help you a long way towards helping to prevent this common infection, especially of you are prone to recurrent UTIs. I recommend you get Buffered C Powder.
If you have an acute urinary tract infection, take one half to one level teaspoon hourly mixed well into a glass of water along with with half a teaspoon of D-mannose powder. This will give you an excellent immune boost and should help you combat that acute UTI in no time.
Apart from drinking cranberry juice, you are probably best to buy a high-quality cranberry herbal supplement and take it daily. Those bottles of juice you get from the supermarket can contain lots of sugar, which kind of defeats the purpose of drinking cranberry juice! A good quality cranberry liquid-filled dietary supplement produces plenty of hippuric acid, which acidifies the urine and inhibits bacterial growth. There are a few other components in this supplement which stop bacteria from adhering to the bladder wall.
You might be used to reaching for a bottle of cranberry juice from your supermarket for urinary tract relief, but as I previously mentioned, did you know that while the cranberry can help, the sugar added to sweeten their bitter juice just feeds the bacteria that might cause the irritation in the first place?
There is a research paper that short-term catheterisation with silver-alloy indwelling catheters will lessen the risk of catheter-acquired urinary tract infections. This demonstrates that a catheter impregnated with colloidal silver was associated with a significant reduction in UTI rates in a real-world setting. (Lederer 2014)
D-mannose is a naturally occurring sugar that’s closely related to glucose, and I have been using and recommending a white powder called D-mannose for over ten years now in my clinic for UTIs with outstanding success. Research has shown that it really works and can help to prevent a UTI quickly. In a study involving over 300 women with a history of recurrent UTIs, researchers treated the women with either two grams of D-mannose, 50 milligrams of an antibiotic, or no treatment daily for six months.
Just 15 percent of those on D-mannose suffered from recurring UTIs compared to 20 percent who were taking antibiotics. The big thing is this – those taking D-mannose suffered literally no side-effects compared to those on the antibiotics who suffered much more with candida yeast infections. Dr. Jonathan Wright from Seattle was among the first doctors to use D-mannose for UTIs in the 1980s, and he found it to be around 85-90 percent effective. This is my experience. Likewise, I used D-mannose in the 1990s and have treated a few hundred patients and it certainly works and is what you will want to try before you even contemplate antibiotics.
D-mannose works to help prevent the onset of a urinary tract infection and is excellent for prophylaxis (prevention) of UTIs in women who are prone to them. It is also good to treat acute UTIs and is totally safe for women and even children.
This is simple to explain: bacteria called E-coli (Escherichia coli) found in your digestive tract cause over 90 percent of UTIs. The problem of a UTI arises when this bug is found and proliferates in an area where it shouldn’t – your urinary system. When normal E. coli gets into your urinary tract and multiplies, you experience the usual signs and symptoms of a UTI:
The interesting thing about E.coli is that the surface of these bacteria are covered with many microscopic finger-like projections that allow them to easily adhere to the inner walls of your bladder and even work their way up your ureters and kidneys, causing infections their as well. Because they cling so well (a bit like Velcro) not that easy to wash them away with just plain old urine. These minuscule finger-like projections are made of a glycoprotein (an amino acid sugar complex) called lectin, and it is this that makes them very sticky.
Mannose, however, binds very well to those lectins (again, like Velcro) and prevents the E.coli from adhering to the walls of your bladder, thereby reducing their numbers quickly. This will allow the water you drink (you have got that message by now, haven’t you?) to effectively flush out those nasty E.coli.
I’d like you to always consider D-mannose powder as a front-line, instead of calling your doctor and taking antibiotics. In my experience as I’ve previously mentioned, once you start on this pathway you may end up like a lot of patients I’ve seen over the years, lots of recurrent UTIs, lots of drugs (and many expensive doctor’s visits), and plenty of side-effects like candida yeast infections.
The antibiotic prescribing will one day end, because the bugs are quickly becoming “super” bugs and outsmarting all those “clever” scientists who keep thinking they can outsmart the bugs. In the 21st Century we are rapidly approaching the end of the antibiotic age, they are widely overused, especially in the animal industry. Use antibiotics wisely, and only when you really need them. That way they will work when you really want them to.
In most cases, UTIs can be effectively treated without antibiotics by using D-mannose.Consider D-mannose your first line of defence, and now that you have read this page and understand exactly how and why it works, does it not make sense? Remember, E.coli accounts for around 90 percent of the bacterial cause and your doctor will be quick to tell you this too. You would wonder why your doctor does not recommend D-mannose powder him or herself! That’s because they weren’t trained to used “non-drug” methods of treating their patients, and that’s OK, that’s why you are reading this webpage right now – you want a natural, drug-free and side-effect free solution.
If you want to be sure if E.coli is your problem or not, your doctor can order a urine culture to identify the particular bacteria present, so you’ll know pretty quickly if yours is one of the minority of cases not caused by E. coli. Chances are if you have used antibiotics many times you may have already developed a resistance towards the commonly prescribed antibiotics or may have one or several other bacterial strains. Either way, if you don’t respond quickly to D-mannose treatment – get that urine culture and work out what’s going on.
Occasionally, despite preventative measures, a kidney infection can develop. If you suspect you have a kidney infection (symptoms include fever and pain (ranging from mild to pretty bad) in your back, side, groin, or abdomen, as well as possible blood in your urine it might be necessary to see your doctor & get carefully assessed and maybe and use an antibiotic so the infection does not spread to your kidney, where it can become pretty serious or even lead to the loss of the kidney.
I can assure you this – D-mannose is very safe, even for long-term use, and most women (or the occasional guy) with single episodes of bladder or urinary tract infection will only need it for a few days at most. In the less than 10 percent of cases where the infection is bacteria other than E. coli, we can start antibiotics in plenty of time.
Maybe you have read that D-mannose is a sugar, and you are worried about diabetes, candida, etc. Relax! Very little (if any) is metabolised, it does not interfere with blood sugar metabolism even for diabetics. From my research, I’ve found that it creates no disruption or imbalance in normal body micro-flora and it’s safe even for pregnant women and small children.
The vast majority of UTIs can be easily cured at home with the methods I’ve outlined above, especially if you follow the hygiene steps, the correct diet and lifestyle choices. I want you to remember this one last thing – stress is one of the KEY triggers and causes of a lowered immune response, and if you are just not recovering, then do an assessment of your lifestyle. Are you living (or working) in a stressful circumstance? Then this may well be that one thing preventing your recovery. Think about it!
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