by Scott Schofield
If you are a long term sufferer from UTI and Cystitis, you’ll already remember how cranberry at first appeared as a savior - the answer to all your prayers. Then, just when things were looking up - your UTI attack began to return - much, much worse than before!
Now why is that? What’s going on? Why are these cystitis attacks happening again and again?
Well, e-coli (notorious source of most Cystitis / UTI and Bladder Infections) is identified in medical circles as an adaptive bacterium, meaning that it is capable of modifying its nutritional requirements to its immediate surroundings. Then, because Cranberry makes urine more acidic (rather than neutral), you are effectively nourishing your e-coli whenever you drink some Cranberry.
More than 5 years ago I began to religiously take cranberry every day, in the belief that it would reduce or eradicate my frequent UTI attacks. At first things improved, but then discovered that I still got just as many infections as previously.
Only when I began to do my own research did I realize that I had been wasting my time and money. I was foolishly following a widely-dispersed myth instead of searching out something that really worked (I did in the end though).
So why is cranberry so popular? Why do so many “experts” claim it works in reducing or curing UTI? Is its reputation wholly underserved, or only partly so? Here is a very basic version of the information I gleaned:
It is very well-known in scientific circles that an e-coli bug sticks like crazy to the walls of the urinary tract, that’s where it sets up home and breeds. It is also well known that Cranberry juice has a slight anti-adhesion characteristic. I believe that from these two unrelated facts people have decided that if bacteria sticks and cranberry un-sticks, then cranberry has to be particularly good for cystitis sufferers and UTI sufferers.
However, I also believe that if you compare its anti-adhesion properties against the damage that can be done in producing acidic urine in which e-coli thrives, then the benefits just don’t outweigh the disadvantages, so cranberry fails miserably.
There’s another problem too - cranberry prevents some antibiotics from working effectively. Antibiotics do their work by damaging the bacteria’s cell walls. Adding cranberry-created hippuric acid to the urine just makes the bacteria to grow a thicker skin, and this makes the future use of that antibiotic less likely to succeed.
This is the reason that UTI-sufferers who have taken cranberry for several years may find that their physician’s normal course of antibiotics no longer works and the infection rapidly returns. The problem is compounded by the modern physician’s unwillingness to prescribe more than the usual 1-week course of antibiotics, when a month or more is needed.
“BUT IT WORKED SO WELL WHEN I STARTED USING IT!”
Yes, it usually does! Taking cranberry results in your urine becoming much more acidic, and that acid will - at first - attack and kill many of your bacterial cells.
So at first you’ll feel better, and probably believe that cranberry is the miracle you have been searching for (I know I did). But that is usually only a temporary respite.
The e-coli cells remaining, (always the stronger tougher ones), will quickly get used to their new environment, then start to reproduce and breed ever-stronger replications of themselves. Your next UTI attack will inevitably be worse than any previous one, and you’ll label cranberry as a curse.
In reality, not all that I’ve outlined here happens to all cystitis or UTI-sufferers, but it really did happen to me! After 21 years of sporadic UTI-problems, I was informed about cranberry. I hated its taste, but taking a cranberry pill every day gave me more than four years of relief.
Then, right out of nowhere, I had a really terrible attack. So I increased my cranberry intake - but as it turned out - to no avail. I had to visit my physician and get a prescription for antibiotics. Then, just a few months later, I had another even more painful UTI, much worse than every before (I’ll spare you the gruesome details). It was only then that I accepted that cranberry no longer the cured for my UTI that I had believed.
I began to look for another option. It took a while, but I eventually located a natural remedy for UTI which is staggering in its simplicity. No known side-effects, no reaction to other drugs, isn’t actually absorbed by the body at all! And it can be used as a uti-preventative or as a highly effective UTI treatment.
It’s called Mannose, or D-Mannose, or Waterfall D Mannose (and no, I don’t know why). It is extracted from trees (just like the simple aspirin), and seems to offer solutions to many people for whom regular UTI’s are part of life. If you want to know more, follow the links in my final paragraph
About the Author:
Dr Scott Scofield is a therapist who writes on mainstream and alternative medicine. To learn more on how to effectively treat cystitis and UTI, or if you want to learn about bladder infection symptoms, visit his blog now.
by
howard3
2008-03-30 05:57
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