If you’re a woman you will probably suffer from a urinary tract infection (UTI) at some point in your life. In fact, UTIs are the second most common reason for hospital visits!
For years I have suffered from chronic UTIs.
They are very uncomfortable and can make life miserable, ruin holidays and your sex-life.
Luckily I managed to get rid of UTIs for good – a lot of which I credit to following the 5 steps I’m going to share with you below.
For anyone who has read my own story, you may remember that repeated courses of antibiotics for chronic UTIs kicked off my interstitial cystitis a few years ago. Can antibiotics cause interstitial cystitis and chronic UTIs? For me, they have definitely played a big role.
This question has been at the back of my mind for a while and today I would like to take a look at some of the scientific evidence to answer this question.
The current gold-standard testing for UTIs involves culturing the bacteria present in a clean-catch midstream urine sample (MSU) in a lab dish.
On top of that, a dipstick test is often used to indicate the presence of infection markers in urine.
The guidelines for these testing methods have been established in the 1950s. With the discovery of the urinary microbiome, inadequacies of this method have come to light.
It turns out that urine is in fact not sterile and that many microbial species cannot be cultured in a lab.
Therefore, current testing for UTIs fails patients by missing infections.
In my last post I’ve looked at biofilm infections and why they could be at the root of bladder problems. In this post I’m going to look at potential treatments for biofilm infections.
If you haven’t read my last post yet it might be a good idea to read it now. It explains what biofilms are.
Biofilms have been recognized to play a role in many infections, yet orthodox treatment options are still limited and research is ongoing.
Treating biofilms is difficult because of the limited ability of antibiotic agents to actually get to the bacteria. Natural antibiotics are no exception.