Each and every year in the United States alone, there are over 10 million visits to medical doctors for urinary tract infections (UTI). If you're someone who suffers from them, I don't have to tell you how uncomfortable they can make you feel or how disruptive they can be to your entire life. In this article I'm going to go through not only how to prevent urinary tract infections, but also what you can do naturally to support your body if you do have a UTI.
It's estimated, actually, that 60% of women will actually suffer from a UTI at least once in their lifetime, and nearly 25% of women are going to suffer from at least one or more in this year alone. But UTIs aren't just limited to females. Nearly 10% of men and even some children may also experience them.
Urinary tract infections are an infection of the urethra, the ureters, the kidney, or the bladder. The most common pathogen in this is E. coli. E. coli is naturally occurring in our bodies. It doesn't normally create a problem, it lives in a homeostasis with us. However, when there's a change in environment for the E. coli, that's where things get a little bit haywire.
Drink Water
One of the best ways we can prevent E. coli from setting up shop is simply by drinking more water. Yes, it is really as simple as that. Bacteria have these little arms that hold onto the bladder walls and can multiply in that environment. When you're regularly flushing out your bladder by drinking more and more water, you're eliminating them, and therefore, they can't really take hold inside the bladder.
A good rule of thumb is to drink the amount of water that's equal to 50% of your body weight in ounces. So what's that mean? Take your weight and divide it in half. For example, if you're 200 pounds, half is 100, and that's the amount of ounces that you should be drinking on a daily basis.
This is not only good for preventing UTIs, but water is necessary for all your metabolic processes, from digestion to hormone balancing, immunity, and even weight loss. Water is necessary.
When you're drinking lots of water, remember, you're going to be urinating a lot more. That's normal, and it's good.
Another key to preventing urinary tract infections is emptying your bladder completely when you're using the restroom. Leaving urine in the bladder and not completely voiding it can create a hospitable environment for bacteria to set up shop and to multiply.
Cranberry
The next way to prevent UTIs is to drink cranberry juice, or you can even take cranberry juice capsules. Cranberry juice contains type A proanthocyanidins, or PACs, and they can prevent bacteria from actually sticking to the bladder wall.
Be very aware that most of the cranberry juice that you're going to get from a grocery store contains a high amount of sugar. Sugar will make things worse.
Sugar tends to feed the bad bacteria, fungus, and yeast that cause UTIs. So drinking a lot of cranberry juice from the grocery store is not the best thing. In fact, recent guidelines from the Journal of Urology recommended taking concentrated cranberry supplements instead of drinking the juice, and that's something that I would definitely recommend as well. Cranberry juice supplements can be taken regularly as a preventative, but they can also be taken if you have an active infection to help speed the recovery process.
Intimacy
Lastly, when talking about prevention, it's important to pay close attention to your intimate life. It's good practice to void your bladder before and after intimacy in order to avoid any cross contamination or the likelihood of a bladder infection. It's also important to keep in mind that if you're using a personal lubricant, use one that's water-based. The oil and petroleum-based products will create an environment that allows bacteria to actually hang out and multiply, and you don't want to have that.
What do you do if you have a bladder infection? The first step is to do everything that you would've done to prevent it in the first place. What that means is drink lots and lots of water, fully void your bladder, avoid sugar, and look to concentrated cranberry supplements. But there's a number of other supplements that can be taken to help speed the process and make the journey a lot more comfortable.
Buchu
Buchu helps disinfect the urinary tract during infections and naturally helps with painful inflammation that oftentimes will accompany the UTI.
Uni Ursi & Juniper
Uni Ursi is a natural yet powerful antimicrobial. Juniper has also been known to be an antimicrobial when you have a UTI, so when you use those two things together, they can be really powerful.
D-mannose
D-mannose is a type of sugar that's found naturally in cranberries and other fruits, and it's one of the most researched and accepted supplements for urinary tract infections.
Hibiscus Flower
Hibiscus flower has been used in Africa and Asia for UTIs for hundreds of years, and it's known to coat and soothe the urinary tract. What that does is it prevents the adhesion of the bacteria to the walls of the bladder and the urethra, and helps speed the process of healing.
Dandelion Root
Dandelion root has also been shown to help clean out the urinary tract during an infection and speed the healing process.
As you can see, there are a lot of things that you can add for relief during a UTI, and sometimes, it can get a little overwhelming. One of the things that I've done to minimize that overwhelm for my patients is to simply tell them, "Just drink 50% of your body weight in ounces every day. Void the bladder completely every trip to the bathroom, and take a supplement that has many or all of these supplements in it all at once."
I formulated something called U.T.I. Rescue. It's a supplement that not only contains D-mannose, but concentrated cranberry juice, hibiscus flower, dandelion root, and so on. That way, you don't have to go to the store and buy four or five different supplements. You can simply take one that has absolutely everything all at once, which makes it a little bit easier.
If you're somebody who's prone to getting urinary tract infections, it's probably a good idea to get some of this and have it on hand rather than trying to get it once you have the infection and then try to have it quickly delivered to you. Sometimes, it can take up to five days from our shipping to get it to you, so it's one of those things I always recommend to have it on hand if you're prone to those.
Of course, you can always go to your local nutrition store and get each of these individually and separately, as well. You just can't get the U.T.I. Rescue anywhere other than Davis Nutrition. At the end of the day, where you get your supplements is completely up to you. The most important thing is that you're taking a natural approach to your health, and you're getting good quality supplements to achieve that. If our line of products helps you, that's fantastic, but our ultimate goal is to continue to make advanced clinical nutrition easy to understand and even easier for you to implement.
Until next time, remember, health is by choice, not chance.
