People who have never experienced urinary tract infections tend to not consider them to be anything more than a nuisance. For all of us who have suffered from them, we know that this is incredibly false. As someone who spent two months of 2010 on multiple antibiotics, in and out of Cleveland emergency rooms in which they had no idea how to perform pelvic exams, multiple nights in extreme discomfort, and one really, really long night in my former significant other’s dorm room playing the geography game to distract me from the pain that my urethra decided to inflict upon me … well, I’ll tell you. A UTI is …
… nothing to guffaw at. It is the worst feeling … the single worst non-life threatening infection I’ve experienced to date.
And the worst thing about ‘em is that the only things that makes a dent in the discomfort are prescription-only antibiotics. That shit that they sell in the drug store? They’re just that … shit. They take perhaps .001% of the discomfort away. If it pops up at night, you either go to the ER or wait until you can go to the doctor.
Anyway, Sarah reported a few months ago that there’s a preventative vaccine in the works for UTIs, but that it’s not going to be on the market for another 3-5 years. Every minute that you have a damned UTI feels like seven eternities. So it was hard for me to get excited. However, I just came across a report that describes a new supplement, Cran-Gyn DDS, that won some award for being super-duper effective at preventing UTIs. It is a combination of probiotics, cranberry extract, and natural D-mannose. According to the news report, this combination is promising because:
Research suggests that components found in cranberry bind to P-fimbriated E. coli (mannose insensitive), thereby preventing the adhesion of E. coli to uroepithelial cells and reducing the ability of E. coli to cause a urinary infection.
D-mannose, a naturally occurring, non-caloric, simple sugar, extracted from the Birch tree, inhibits adherence of E. coli type 1 fimbriae to uroepithelial cells.
Certain probiotic strains, like L. acidophilus DDS®-1, have demonstrated the ability to produce bacteriocins that can inhibit growth of E. coli in vitro.
Alright, BRB, I’m gonna go buy some of this at the health food store. I’ll keep you updated.
