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If you've suffered from recurring UTI, Cystitis or Bladder Infections for some time, you'll recall how cranberry - when you first tried it - seemed to be that mythical knight in shining armor, an answer to all your prayers. But then, just as things were improving and you seemed to have a permanent cure for UTI - the attacks returned - much worse than before! That's what happened to me - anyway! Now why is that? What's going on. How do you avoid that happening again and again? Well, e-coli (the cause of most Cystitis / UTI and Bladder Infections) is known as an adaptive bacterium, meaning it is capable of adapting its nutritional needs to its immediate environment. Because Cranberry creates acidic urine (rather than the normal neutral kind), you are effectively nourishing the e-coli whenever you drink 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. When I began to conduct my own research I realized that I was wasting both my time and my money. I was accepting a fiction instead of taking the time to locate something that really worked (although I did find it in the end). If it's a myth, then why is cranberry so popular? Why do the "experts" say it works in reducing or curing Cystitis / UTI? Is its reputation totally underserved, or just partly undeserved? Here is a very basic encapsulation of the information I gleaned: It is well-known (in scientific circles anyway) that the e-coli bug sticks like crazy to the walls of the urinary tract, where it sets up home and multiplies. It is also well known that Cranberry juice has a mildly anti-adhesive property. From these two unrelated facts everyone seems to have decided that if bacteria sticks and cranberry un-sticks, then cranberry must be particularly good for cystitis sufferers and UTI sufferers. However, if you compare the benefits of its anti-adhesion properties against the potential damage done by producing an acidic urine in which e-coli thrives, then the benefit just don't outweigh the disadvantages, and cranberry fails miserably There's another problem - cranberry can prevent many antibiotics from working effectively. Antibiotics work by attacking and damaging a bacteria's cell walls. Adding cranberry-created hippuric acid to the urine just persuades the bacteria to grow a thicker skin, making the future use of that antibiotic much less likely to succeed. This is the reason that those UTI-sufferers who have been taking cranberry for years, frequently find that their physician's normal course of antibiotics is insufficient and the infection quickly returns. This problem is compounded by the modern doctors' unwillingness to prescribe more than the standard 1-week course of antibiotics, when really 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 you'll feel better at first, and soon believe that cranberry is a miracle cure. But that is usually only a temporary respite. Things inevitably get worse later. The remaining e-coli cells, (the stronger tougher ones), very soon get used to their new environment and begin to reproduce and breed ever-stronger clones of themselves. Your next attack will then be worse than any attack you had before you embarked on that cranberry-juice course (or do I mean cranberry juice curse)? Now, all that I've said above does not happen to every cystitis or UTI-sufferer, but it certainly happened to me! After 20 years of occasional episodes, I discovered cranberry. I hated the juice, but taking cranberry tablets every day gave me four years of relief. Then, right out of the blue, I had a really bad attack. I increased my cranberry intake - but to no avail. I had to visit my physician and get antibiotics. A few months later, I had another much more painful UTI, much worse than every before (I'll spare you all the gory details). It was only now that I accepted that cranberry was no longer the cure for UTI that I had once believed. I began to search for an alternative. It took a while, but I then located a natural remedy for UTI, and which is staggering in its simplicity. It ha no known side-effects, no interaction with other drugs, and it isn't absorbed by the body at all! And it can also be used as a UTI-preventative or as a very effective uti treatment. It's called Mannose, or D-Mannose, or Waterfall D Mannose (sorry, I don't know why either). It is extracted from trees (just like the common aspirin), and I believe it offers a solution for many people for whom regular UTI's are part of everyday life. If you want to learn more about it, just follow the links in my final paragraph
By: Scott Schofield
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 these links now.
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