Welcome to Alternative Medicine
Why Your Uti Bugs Thrive On Cranberry Article
Why Your Uti Bugs Thrive On Cranberry!
from: Scott SchofieldIf you are a long term sufferer from UTI and Cystitis, you'll probably already recall how cranberry juice - when you first tried it - appeared as a savior, the answer to all your prayers. Then, sadly, just as things were beginning to improve - your UTI attacks or Cystitis attacks began to return - and much worse than before!
Now why is that? What's going on? Why are these cystitis attacks 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.
Approximately 5 years ago I began to take daily cranberry juice, believing that it would reduce or stamp out my frequent Cystitis attacks. I improved at first, but then I realized that I was still having 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, if you balance the benefits of being an anti-adhesion agent against the damage done by producing and acidic urine in which e-coli thrives, the benefits just don't outweigh the bads, and cranberry fails miserably.
Another problem - cranberry can stop many antibiotics working effectively. Antibiotics work by damaging the bacteria's cell walls. Adding cranberry-created hippuric acid to the urine just encourages the bacteria to grow a thicker skin, making a future use of antibiotics 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, and so it will! Taking cranberry results in your urine moving from a neutral state to an acidic state, and that acid will attack and kill many of your bacterial cells - at first!
So you will immediately feel better, and probably proclaim cranberry as the miracle you have been searching for (I know I did). But that was 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.
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 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 a search for an alternative. It took a long time, but I did locate a natural remedy for UTI, one which is staggering in its simplicity. It had no known side-effects, no reaction to other drugs, and it wasn't absorbed by the body! And it could also be used as a uti-preventive or as a very effective UTI remedy.
It's called Mannose, or D-Mannose, or Waterfall D Mannose (no, I don't know why). It comes from trees (just like the humble aspirin), and seems to offer hope to many people for whom regular UTI's are part of life. If you want to learn more, just follow the links in my final paragraph
Dr Scott Scofield is a therapist who writes on mainstream and alternative medicine. To learn more on how to (http://healthneo.com ) effectively treat cystitis and UTI, or if you want to learn about (http://healthneo.com/uti ) bladder infection symptoms, visit his blog now. Get a totally unique version of this article from our (http://www.uberarticles.com/home.php?id=38211&b=771) article submission service