That Recurring UTI Could Be More Than Just A UTI

I know that many of you are troubled by urinary tract infections (UTIs) and continue to have symptoms even after treatment. In fact, many of you may feel that your UTI did not even go away (or keeps coming back)?

Most women are sensitive to the changes they may feel with a UTI because they can be rather bothersome. For example, they can cause a strong urge to have to urinate constantly even though very little urine is released at each attempt. Or there may be a painful, burning sensation while urine is passing. Additionally there is often a strong odor to the urine and it may be darker in color or cloudy. Sometimes the urine may look normal but have some blood in it. You may also have tenderness above the pubic bone area. Other symptoms may be pelvic pain and dysparunea (painful sex). And some women have no symptoms at all!

Gone unchecked, UTIs can migrate up to the kidneys. At this point it becomes much more serious and symptoms can include fever, malaise, chills, nausea, vomiting and back and side pain.

UTIs in pregnancy can become serious quickly and lead to preterm labor and delivery and complicated infections. They should treated aggressively without hesitation.

I have many patients that come to me after being treated 2 or 3 times for a UTI, having been on different antibiotics, but still are not feeling any improvement. This is very common because in some women the origin of their UTI is actually from a vaginal infection which has never been checked or treated. This is very common because the vagina and bladder are sitting right next to each other.

Let’s be honest, during sex men have bad aim, right? They slip up and down and every which way until we help direct them in the right place. So this drags bacteria from the anus and spreads it up around the urethra and vaginal area where it should not be. Once there, it can begin the whole processes of infecting the vagina and urinary tract.

The trouble is we feel the urinary symptoms so much more than the vaginal infection. So we focus on that and may not even notice that we have a vaginal infection. We get treated over and over for the bladder infection and those antibiotics worsen the vaginal infection, which re-infects the bladder and it goes on and on.

Of course there are other ways to get UTIs like anatomic defects, wiping improperly (back to front instead of front to back), not emptying your bladder after sex, smoking, and holding your urine too long.

It is very important to drink lots of water and avoid too much caffeine, alcohol or citrus juices.

So check all this out when If you have this problem. And please go see your gynecologist because some doctors do not want to check your whole body, especially the vaginal area, and that is so important to us, right?