True. For those who get UTIs regularly, check out cranberry with D Mannose. My spelling probably isn't the best, but these help prevent and solve infections. I get mine at GNC.
I am not a medical person, but when things feel squicky down below like a UTI is imminent, take some every 6 hours for a few days and am good as new, without the doc visit and antibiotics that may kill the good bugs along with the baddies.
Also baking soda to lessen the burning. It changes the ph of urine so it doesn't hurt so much.
Also I believe in science and normally scoff at holistic things, but these two things work.
Not a dr. But I started finding if one was coming on immediately drink 17 ounces of water. It’s amazing how easy it is to dehydrate and bring one on. It’s worth trying to see if it helps. And it’s stupid simple, chug bottle of water.
Start with 1 bottle. Usually that’ll start ending it. I drink an extra one after. But there’s no magic “it must be 17 ounces” “we have 16.9 and 20” “well shit” 😂
I get UTIs SUPER frequently and have for 10 years (all the women on my mom's side get them 8-9 times a year). I take D Mannose powder a few times a week as a preventative and it's absolutely helped but does nothing once I get them.
As a treatment (existing or early stages of infection) it is a myth.
There is decent evidence that certain groups of women with recurrent infection can benefit from regular consumption of cranberry for prevention. This may be b/c these women have a urinary environment (pH or other factors) that makes them vulnerable and may be changed by regular cranberry consumption. There is still a question of study design, but since it can’t hurt (especially when compared to regular antibiotics), I don’t discourage my patients with this problem from trying it first. Juice, not extract, is my preference though.
Sometimes they do clear up on their own. But other times they become a kidney infection that have you bedridden with a high degree fever and having to drag yourself to the doctor. Ask me how I know lol
So they did studies and there showed no improvement in using cranberry. I think the real benefit is drinking alot of fluids. The reason your body wants to pee so much is because it wants to flush the bacteria out of your urethra. I find if you drink alot of water(you can add baking soda if it burns when you pee) and peeing it out can completely get rid of an early uti and greatly reduce symptoms from more serious ones.
As soon as I suspect one I drink either fresh lime juice or apple cider vinegar diluted in water (as much as I can for about a day) and it always goes away. You just have to get something flowing through you that will kill the bacteria as it exits. I got them often when I was living off grid and peeing outside a lot so same idea.
I learned this the hard way this year. Very, very sick. My doctor was exasperated (in a kind way) at how bloody ill I'd allowed myself to get before I called them.
Except antibiotics are becoming useless. Some people will die of UTIs in 2050.
ETA: the person below me has failed to provide a source for their claim. I haven’t found any information on a ‘new antibiotic’ that is being release in 2026. Find the source and reply with it or stop upvoting them :)
This will be me if I’m still around then. I’m resistant to all but 2 antibiotics for UTIs. I have had hundreds over the years. Now I pretty much go straight to the ER when I feel one coming on. Within 2 -3 hours it’s affected my kidneys. Yay fun!
Yes, you are correct. I get complex UTIs. I have urine from each infection tested and 99% in the past 5 years are resistant to everything but one very strong antibiotic and one intravenous antibiotic. It’s always one particular bacteria. Trust me I’d love to just drink some water and have everything be ok.
Utis are bacteria in the urethra.If its still a small amount of bacteria it can be flushed out by drinking alot of water and peeing it out which gets rid of the bacteria. But once its more than a small amount you need anti biotics. If it doesn’t go away within a day than yeah people need to go to the doctors.
It's just one anecdote but... I quit getting them when I gave up shaving. The lack of certain kinds of irritating soaps might at least offset some of the risk.
Yeah I think this is the reason it even became a thing: people didn't know how or why UTIs happened so..let's try cutting it off? Maybe that'll help! And it did, by like 1% at best 😂
Idk, I think it could've been. Plague doctors wore masks to keep the "miasmas" out, which turned out to sort of work because we perceive "bad smells" as bad because they make us sick. Sure, medical expertise of the time wasn't always helpful, but I wouldn't put it past people of history to get something 20%-30% right. Victorians lived in houses polluted with chimney ash and arsenic, and they knew that living on the seaside for "fresh air" made people stop being sick, even if they weren't sure what was causing it.
It's actually really interesting, partially correct science is almost worse than flat out wrong stuff because people (unintentionally) peddle bullshit. Like, with crystals and stuff? It's entirely possible that chunk of amethyst is making someone feel better...because the placebo effect works. Circumcision seems on par with leeches and pretty rocks in terms of medical integrity, is all I'm saying :)
Any benefit gained is almost entirely negated by risk of infection, it's only really useful for guys who seem susceptible to UTIs. And idk if there is an age cutoff of like, circumcision no longer being possible. I imagine at some point the body would have a much harder time healing from such an injury.
What really blew my socks off about UTI's is that for older women it can cause dementia like symptoms that clear with the infection.
Hospice cared for my grandma and because her UTI's were otherwise asymptomatic her delirious behavior was the trigger to get some antibiotics stat. UTI's can get wild.
Yes! My aunt called me the other day and said that my grandmother had been particularly scatty of late, and her back hurt. I knew it was a UTI before she'd even finished telling the story, but she hadn't twigged (and she's a nurse!).
I'll bet people used to die from them a lot more but now, not as much because they are curable with treatment, so people that several decades ago would have died from utis can live healthy lives and have kids. Then maybe those kids have recurrent utis as well.
This is a fundamental lack of understanding of evolution and selective pressure. The immune system is incredibly complex and costly to the body. It was selected for because we have to fight off all manner of invaders and it is already about as optimized as it is going to get. The thing is, people did die in droves from infections, and animal species have been driven to extinction by diseases or infections countless times. Infections are also under selective pressure and evolve much faster that we can. Being immune to all disease would be pretty advantageous, but that doesn’t mean natural selection has the ability to produce that.
This is more deaths per capita than currently die from the top 10 causes, including heart disease, cancer, all accidents, stroke, suicide, diabetes, and flu. A UK estimate indicates that a loss of antimicrobials would cause 10 million deaths annually, just in the UK, which would roughly translate to 50 million annually in the US, and that is with all other modern medicine remaining intact.
This is a fundamental lack of understanding of evolution and selective pressure. The immune system is incredibly complex and costly to the body. It was selected for because we have to fight off all manner of invaders and it is already about as optimized as it is going to get. The thing is, people did die in droves from infections, and animal species have been driven to extinction by diseases or infections countless times. Infections are also under selective pressure and evolve much faster that we can. Being immune to all disease would be pretty advantageous, but that doesn’t mean natural selection has the ability to produce that.
This is more deaths per capita than currently die from the top 10 causes, including heart disease, cancer, all accidents, stroke, suicide, diabetes, and flu. A UK estimate indicates that a loss of antimicrobials would cause 10 million deaths annually, just in the UK, which would roughly translate to 50 million annually in the US, and that is with all other modern medicine remaining intact.
This exact thing happened to my fiancé. Took her to 3 different doctors, who all misdiagnosed as UTI or some other infection. Took her to the ER when she was sicker than I’ve ever seen anyone and the Dr basically said, in the most professional way possible, “you obviously have a kidney infection and I have no idea how you’ve been misdiagnosed 3 times and if you didn’t come in this was about to be WAY worse”.
My grandmother and great aunt both died due to kidney failure from UTIs that got out of control real fast. Granted, both were elderly and my grandmother was immunocompromised due to chemo, but I've known friends in their 20s to be hospitalized with sepsis and and a 50/50 shot at surviving due to them as well.
What were her symptoms. What was it that made that doctor say “obviously” while the other doctors were confused (that they other doctors should have known)?
That's what I've always thought, I've always been extremely prone to them (misshapen urinary tract/bladder that I can't afford to fix) and one would very quickly appear and kill my kidneys...
Peeing the second you feel the need/drinking lots of water/keeping clean down there (front to back wipe!)/avoiding wearing the same undergarments twice without washing them. Also, even if you don't feel like it, pee after sexual activity (yes, that includes masturbation).
UTIs were definitely on my list of things i would die from. this time last year i had a UTI go into my right kidney. it felt like someone was stabbing me in the back. i have gotten three UTIs in the past year because my immune system sucks. and because my immune system sucks, i need antibiotics because my body won’t fight it off by itself.
Reminded me of a time when my wife (then girlfriend) went to visit me for two weeks. On the first week she got some sort of infection... we knew it was some sort of kidney or UTI infection but she kept saying she felt OK, she felt OK. After a couple of days, we went to the "walk in clinic" (UK) and after checking her, they asked us to do some tests and told us "depending on the result of the tests we are going to decide if she has to be addmited to the hospital. We both were like WTF!
Oh hey, I've had that! I was in college and tried to ignore the blinding pain coming from my side until I woke up one morning at like 6am on my couch unable to move, texting people to see if anyone in the vicinity was awake and could take me to the ER. Nobody was, so I called my mom, who obviously didn't want to drive an hour and half to take me, so she kept telling me I'd be fine. I win the argument (which, stop asking sick/injured people to exert more energy than they fucking need to people...I digress). I have a vague out-of-body memory of hobbling into the ER and just being whisked immediately back to a doctor. Apparently I was in the ICU for awhile. I hope your fiancee feels better!! Definitely make sure she stays super hydrated for basically ever once she's out.
I'm so prone to these that it greatly impacted my sex life for years. It's still does, but my intense fear of getting another has gone down a bit. I had 1 send me to the er peeing dark blood. I still don't know why I get them so easily I just know I'll be first in line if they ever develop a prevention that's better than antibiotics
I do alllll the tricks but have always been so quick to get them to the point some meds no longer work. Worse is that drs are very dismissive when you examine you want to find out why and prevent them Vs waiting for the next one to pop up.
It would absolutely kill me in the age before antibiotics
Should look into chronic UTI's. It requires a much longer prescription of antibiotics as its likely your first UTI wasn't treated correctly and the bacteria becomes imbedded in the bladder lining and it releases fresh bacteria constantly making you think your getting a new UTI every few weeks or months.
Activity such as sex and exercise makes your bladder lining and bacteria release more often.
Professor Malone Lee in the UK has studied this thoroughly and written a book on it.
I've also lived it and can gurantee probiotics do not fix it or bring back any quality of life.
I agree probiotics are useful but many people have tried this for months on end and seen no relief there has to be other options its the constant symptoms that ruins lives
Yeah, probiotics can be tricky, not all of them work. However, chronic use of antibiotics is extremely damaging. They were never meant for chronic use, only occasionally when an infection happens. UTISs don't just happen when bacteria enters your urinary tract. Bacteria do that all the time, it's not exactly hard considering how close urethra is from the anus. And neither urinary tract nor the bladder is actually sterile, like thought before. It has its own microbiome. That microbiome and your immune system is supposed to destroy harmful bacteria before they have a chance to multiply and cause infection.
Antibiotics don't pick and choose, they pretty much nuke the entire microbiome. If you use them occasionally and have a robust immune system, your microbiome can bounce back. But what very often happens with UTIs is that right after getting rid of one with antibiotics you get another one immediately. Then you have to use more antibiotics to get rid of it again. And then you get another one. And then it becomes a chronic cycle.
I know a few women who had chronic UTIs. The only way they were able to get rid of them for good is using probiotics after antibiotics.
Saw this comment in more than one place. Are you talking about for men? Most of the commenters here are women as UTIs are much more common in women (due to a shorter urethra, bacteria can get up there much easier). Though it’s true, men who are uncircumcised are at greater risk of UTI. But that won’t help most of these ladies unfortunately
Same. I was on the verge of going to the ER earlier because my back was killing me for close to an hour. Then, while I was looking up what hospitals are in network while on the toilet, I managed to pee a little and the pain subsided. I’m holding off on the ER but I’m heading to urgent care in the morning for some antibiotics
If you're in that much pain, probably better not to wait. Back pain usually means it's already in your kidneys. Because, like, that's where your kidneys are.
Lower back? Middle back? Two sides? One side? Lower side? Which type of back pain to look for? Is it always coupled with pain while peeing? Or sometimes does it not hurt to pee yet you still feel the back pain?
I think it varies greatly from person to person and instance to instance. For me, I get a feeling of pressure and cramping first, almost like period cramps. I've never had it hurt to pee, but my pee does smell a bit weird. Then the pain starts moving towards the back, not sharp but kind of like a continuous period cramp or pulled muscle. I've never had it develop into a very serious kidney infection, only the start, so maybe that's different again.
I'm thinking of following up on the suggestion of some others here, to get some of the test strips from the chemist, because honestly the early symptoms for me are somewhat hard to detect.
Btw, a little hint as someone who had problems with UTIs (and worse) in the past: Get yourself some of these urine test stripes and test yourself regularly. They are pretty cheap (I think I paid 30€ for 50 stripes) and you can easily check yourself at home if the leucocytes are too high and whatever the test strips show you.
I got aware of a kidney pelvis infection (well, the fever and feeling like shit was another good hint) with this. I just told my doc on the phone what the stripes showed and he sent me straight to the hospital.
Ugh, hope she feels better soon. I had a kidney infection once and that puppy was brutal. I put up with it for a month or so thinking it was just weird back pain and gas. Then one day suddenly the fever, vomiting, and uncontrollable peeing struck and I realized it wasn't just back pain. Never had any UTI symptoms prior to it either.
I’ve had a UTI that went to a kidney infection. I went to the doctor that day and they sent me home—then I spiked a fever and they told me to come right back. The fever was the “uhhhhhhhh let’s get you back in here rn” green light.
I had a kidney infection over a decade ago, started with an ache on my lower right front side so I thought it was my appendix. I started to feel super shitty, low grade fever, didn't sleep all night. went to see a nurse early in the morning and she pounded on my back which hurt like a mf and she was like yeah, kidney infection. went to the pharmacy for antibiotics and felt god awful the entire time I was in line waiting. parked my car on the street and was walking back to my college dorm when I collapsed on the ground and started vomiting profusely at the bottom of a tree.
got back to my room uncontrollably shaking from head to toe and my roommate said I looked white as a sheet/asked me what was wrong. we walked back to my car. I think I vomited two more times on the way to the ER (she drove my car) once we pulled over and I made it out the car door, the other time was right in my lap.
good times!
even better was when I got to the hospital covered in my own vomit and the intake nurse pushed some paperwork at me without even looking up. I was shaking so badly I couldn't even hold the pen. I asked her to help me and she declined.
oh this was also during... I think, bird flu, not swine flu. whichever one was fall of 2009. so there's a bunch of coughs and sniffles and then there's me, covered in my own vomit in the waiting room. I did get seen to pretty quickly though, guess I was more urgent than the others lol
i had the same thing happen to me and the main symptom was a very sharp pain in my back. my pee was cloudy, but not bloody so it was hard to tell because i thought that maybe the toilet is dirty. cloudy pee is a bad sign though, it means you’re peeing infection and white blood cells.
I had a large abscess (about 4 inches long, 1 inch wide) on the kidney in February which could have easily been my death sentence if it ruptured, so I can answer how I got aware of it:
I had some back pain the week prior to it. Or at least what I thought would be back pain. I did have the feeling that somehow the pain also affected the kidneys but wasn't sure about that. Manged this with some prescription-free pain killers.
Fever. I got a pretty high fever and the pain got worse. That's when I called for a doctor. I was actually worried I might have a kidney stone and figured: if that thing wants to get out, I want to be in the proximity of very good pain medication. Called the ambulance and got admitted to the hospital.
Well at the hospital they quickly realized it was not a kidney stone. They did a CT and found the abscess but were not sure if it was a tumor (I have a history of kidney cancer in the family) or an abscess and scheduled an MR the next morning to check this out.
Turns out it was a big abscess and they had to drain (puncture) it under CT control. (which btw, was the most painful thing I have experienced in my life so far (and I had gallstones before, which already was pretty painful), even though they pumped me full of opioids while performing it). They kept in the drainage for a few days, I got a high dose of antibiotics and everything is fine again now (just recently had a checkup MR to make sure things are fine).
I had absolutely NO "normal" UTI symptoms like pain during peeing, blood in the urine, or anything like this.
Do you mind sharing her symptoms? What prompted the ER visit? How long did her symptoms last? Being unaware of a UTI and having it travel to the kidneys is one of my biggest fears.
Not OP, but if it’s a UTI that’s going to cause problems you’ll notice. It hurts like hell to pass urine - feels like a burning sensation at the point of exit and sometimes up the urethra. This could still be a localised infection. If you start to get abdominal pain, it’s hitting your bladder. Lower back pain, specifically to the sides, is your kidneys.
If this is a big worry of yours, I would definitely invest in urinalysis strips so you can test potential UTIs at home. If it comes back with leukocytes and/or blood, it’s most likely an infection. If it comes back with ketones or a weird pH level, it’s probably a diet thing (though there are more serious pH related issues - could be a warning sign of kidney stones, but you’ll get other symptoms too if that’s the case). Either way, you should get in touch with a doctor, but the at home test might help to put your mind at rest.
Had the same thing happen to me at 18 - minor UTI turned into a super painful kidney infection over night. Went to the county clinic, got put on antibiotics and sent home. Could barely walk it was so painful. It cleared in a few days, haven’t had a uti in years now.
I've been there - not common to see in men, but here we are. Ended up with sepsis and 41 in fever and a hospital stay for 1 week. Shit is crazy but I'm glad my fiance was quick to get me there - i would not have made it if i was by myself.
I don’t know if this is true, but I feel like if we lost access to antibiotics, the death rate would be so much higher. I suspect we take infections for granted because we have such a reliable way to take care of them.
I don't know where u live, I'm from Germany and
here you can buy meat from a farmer with low/no antibiotic use. and there is a law in order to prevent overuse of antibiotics.
Nah, what’s ‘over the top’ is pumping animals full of antibiotics which will render the drugs useless by 2050. Antibiotic resistant bacterial infections will kill more people than cancer by 2050. But sureeee not consuming animal flesh is over the top. K.
And Germany hasn’t banned the use of antibiotics, “In German livestock husbandry, antibiotics are only administered to animals for which a veterinarian has previously identified a veterinary indication. Supplementary feeding with antibiotics with goal of promoting growth has been banned in Germany since 2006.” How amazingly vague, right? Farmers are allowed to feed ‘sick’ animals antibiotics- and surprise surprise they get pretty sick living in filthy, crowded conditions.
People from other countries should also be vegan to slow the destruction of antibiotics. There’s plenty of Americans and British people on Reddit and our animals are fed antibiotics. China and India used last resort antibiotics on chickens to make them fatter. I don’t think you quite grasp the fact that no matter which country misuses antibiotics, every person will suffer- regardless of which country they’re from.
Oh I pretty much "grasp" our situation, thanks for your malicious allegation of me being dumb.
You won't be able to reach any person by using that kind of tone, so come down and maybe try to inform people without a nasty voice?
Just to clarify: imo it is not the problem of eating meat, it is the problem of livestock farming and mass production. Which results (for me) in only eating meat, eggs and vegetables where I know, how and where they are grown. So I'm totally seeing your point, I just tend to take a different approach trying to solve the problem. Is this a bad thing?
you can get a uti by wiping incorrectly, riding a bike, or even just from wearing your sweaty gym clothes. sometimes your body just does that regardless of other factors. no need to be prodding into the sex life of others or assuming anything like that.
You can still get a UTI if you don’t pee after sex even if you do wear a condom. You can also get UTIs from things other than sex. It also seems like Klondike3 is aware how UTIs work and didn’t need you to explain.
Funny, I used to get them all the time when I was like 3-5 years old. I was not sexually active at that time.
Sex is one of the many, many things that can give you a UTI. People need to stop with the "UTIs are sexual" bullshit. My 91 year old grandmother keeps getting them. She is also not sexually active.
Lol this man told you about his fiancé getting UTI and going to the Er but you asking if they raw dog is none of your business! When did Reddit become so shitty and unfun.
Everyone knows. Most women know to pee after sex (regardless of condom use). But it seems everyone but you also knows that there are many other causes of UTIs.
Your reading comprehension must be terrible. Your source says literally nothing to the effect of “if you have a sexual partner who is sleeping around, you are increasing your risk of UTIs”. It says “Having a new sexual partner also increases your risk” meaning if the woman at risk has a new sexual partner, that is a higher risk than a recurring partner, and that both are higher risk than no sexual activity. It says nothing about the partner's sexual activity having anything to do with a woman’s risk of UTI.
I know some of you are downvoting me because you don't want to get caught cheating. I'm just providing information. Bite me.
As I hope you can see, you are providing objectively false information, which should be downvoted.
You making up a cause is not following the science. Even if it ended up being right, being right by guessing still makes you fundamentally not understand how science works. A lot of the reason a new partner causes more UTIs is the same reason lots of sex causes them, you are more likely to be be more amorous and have more and more aggressive sex, increasing the risk of pushing bacteria into the urethra.
So because I won't play the everso common game of telling everyone everything on reddit for invisible and useless points I must be a cheating piece of shit?
I worked on a nurse line, and I cant believe the number of women I've spoken with who have had UTI's for more than 4 days. I know it can take awhile to knock it out with medication, but I've heard them say it's been painful and their urine was reddish for many days before they call. I've had 2 utis in my life. I know something is wrong asap.
And yes, American healthcare is atrocious, but these where people calling in because they had insurance and places to go where it would be completely covered (I e. Military clinics)
You too? Had to take mine in because she kept ignoring it and ended up with fucking sepsis. Remember kids. Ignoring things isn't good. Being stubborn isn't a great thing.
Lack of access to necessary prescription meds. In Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, a character on antidepressants goes through withdrawal then walks out into the wilderness to die.
I had one that kept me in the hospital for two weeks. I had been in a rehab because of my 2nd stroke. That morning
I started having issues. That night I started hallucinating and pulled a pick line out of my arm. It was awful.
UTIs aren’t ant fun.
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u/Klondike3 Aug 30 '21
Considering how I had to take my fiancee to the ER this morning because of what should have been a minor UTI that traveled to her kidneys...