Alexa Fleckenstein M.D.

Most UTIs can be dealt with simply, with herbs, probiotics, and so on. Antibiotics should be reserved for the really dangerous infections. Not only should we curb antibiotic use because of possible resistances; it also has been shown that bacteria bury into the bladder wall during a course with antibiotics – only to pop up again a bit later! But for starters, this warning: IMMEDIATELY see your physician or the Emergency Room, if you have any of these signs/symptoms: • Blood in the urine • Pus from your vagina /penis • Fever (ANY fever means that the infection has gone beyond the confines of the bladder) • Flank/kidney pains: If you have pain that far away from your bladder, it means that the UTI ascended to your kidneys. Or that you have kidney stones. • ALL UTIs in children should be seen by a doctor. • If you never had a UTI before. The usual cause of UTIs, especially in women, is sexual intercourse. Women have a very short urethra, so bacteria can walk up easily and invade the bladder. UTIs are most common in young women (frequent sex) and in women after menopause (lacking estrogen leads to shrinking tissues which means less protection against invading bacteria). This is what you can do to prevent UTIs: • Make sure that man and woman are clean at their private parts. Insist especially that your man washes behind his foreskin daily, and you yourself wash between the folds. Don’t use soap – daily water washings suffice! • Use a lubricant to make sex smoother. • Right after sex, the woman should get up and urinate to flush out potential bacteria. • Avoid all sugars and white starches. • If you tend to get UTIs often, take cranberry capsules for at least a day after sex. Cranberries prevent bacteria to lodge onto the bladder mucosa. • Drink enough hot fluid. • Take a daily probiotic – this helps get rid of bad bacteria in the bowel (which are most often the culprit in urinary infections). • A new and promising treatment is another probiotic, Lactobacillus crispatus that normalizes the vagina flora (taken intra-vaginally), thus preventing “bad” bacteria to invade the bladder. • Doing Kegel exercises or standing on one leg (see a former blog) to strengthen pelvic muscle. If your muscles down there are weak, you might not be able to empty your bladder fully each time – and that is a set-up for recurrent UTIs. • Regularly take women’s herbs after menopause to strengthen vaginal mucosa. Prevention of course is better than treatment. But when you get the familiar sensation of burning during voiding that heralds a UTTI, you should act IMMEDIATELY, because any infection is easier to treat, the earlier you catch it. Other symptoms of a UTI are: a cloudy urine, an offensive odor, discomfort in your bladder area and the urge to go frequently. Apart from the measures above that you should continue, use these tried-and-true herbs in a tea, three times a day: • Uva ursi (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) • Usnea spp. – a group of lichens growing on trees Other herbs helpful in UTI: • Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis) – or any other source of berberine would do as goldenseal is an endangered species. • Marshmallow root (Althea officinalis) – soothing, but not necessarily healing • Buchu (Agathosma betulina – formerly Barosma betulina), a plant from South Africa. • Corn silk (Zea mays) – and old stand-by • Horsetail (Equisetum arvense) – should not be taken too long as it is harsh on the kidneys. • Indian Coleus plant (Coleus forskohlii) reportedly has effectivity against UTIs too, but the data are still scant. This would be a plant to investigate if you have allergies to all the aforementioned herbs. • Also worth trying is D-Mannose – not strictly an herb, but a sugar - which only works against E. coli that happens to be the most commonly found bacterium in UTIs. • Similar proanthocyanidins that work in cranberries are also found in blueberries and strongly colored fruit and vegetables, tea (black and green), black currant, bilberry, grape seed, grape skin and red wine,  Read More