Why Do Uti Bugs Love Cranberry?

If you are a long term sufferer from UTI and Cystitis, you'll already remember how cranberry at first appeared as a savior - the answer to all your prayers. Then, just when things were looking up - your UTI attack began to return - much, 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.

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 started to do my own research I realized that I was wasting my time and my money. I was believing a myth instead of finding something that really worked (I did find it in the end though).

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

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 why some UTI-sufferers who have taken cranberry for years may find that their physician's standard course of antibiotics no longer works and their infections quickly return. This problem is compounded by the modern physician's desire to prescribe smaller than the usual courses of antibiotics, when actually a longer course is needed.

"BUT IT SEEMED TO WORK SO WELL - AT FIRST!"

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 at first you'll feel better, and probably believe that cranberry is the miracle you have been searching for (I know I did). But that is usually only a temporary respite.

Those remaining e-coli cells, (always the stronger tougher ones), will soon get used to their new environment, then begin to reproduce and breed ever-stronger duplicates of themselves. Your next attack will inevitably be worse than any attack you've had before, 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, out of the blue, I had an attack which was really bad. I stepped up the cranberry intake - to no avail. I had to visit my doctor and get antibiotics. Then a few months later, another much more painful UTI hit me, much worse than every before (I'll spare you the gory details). It was only now that I realized that cranberry was no longer the cure for UTI that I had 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 (and no, I don't know why). It is extracted from trees (just like the simple aspirin), and seems to offer solutions to many people for whom regular UTI's are part of life. If you want to know more, follow the links in my final paragraph

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Dr Scott Scofield is a therapist / acutherapist 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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