On Healthy Living

Having a UTI or Urinary Tract Infection is an experience I’d rather not repeat again. Give me a runny nose, a racking cough or fever any day. Just not a UTI, please!

UTI’s are actually very common, affecting mostly women than men. Although not serious, they cause pain and extreme discomfort. Because I constantly had to urge to pee, I once spent an entire night pacing the bathroom floor — wanting to pee but not being able to.

Here are the most common symptoms of a urinary tract infectio: a burning sensation when you urinate, feeling like you need to urinate more often than usual, urine smells bad, back pain, cloudy, dark or bloody urine and pain or discomfort in the lower abdominal area.

Long been used by Native Americans both as food and as treatment of bladder and kidney diseases, the cranberry was believed to be effective because it acidified the urine. It is not really clear to researchers how drinking a glass of cranberry juice three times a day works, but this is the theory. The high acidity in cranberries prevents bacterial growth, thus reducing the chances of E. coli and other bacteria to adhere to the lining of the urinary tract and when you urinate, it gets washed away easily.

honey_g wrote this on July 2nd, 2008 and filed it under Healthy Living, Health Foods |