Hi, I’m not a doctor!
Or a certified anything. Well, not anything to do with natural medicine, anyway.
I’m just a woman who gets things that standard medication won’t kill. Or the medication works, but I’m allergic to it. (Yes, Monistat. I’m looking at you.)
I got my first UTI at age 30. I was a mother of 4, healthy, never had any bladder or even any vaginal infections, and one Saturday morning I woke up with a slight feeling of pressure and burning and thought, “I wonder if this is what a UTI feels like?”.
Um..yes, girlfriend. Yes, it is.
It was my eldest child’s birthday weekend and we had family in town and my youngest was 7 months old..I tried to ignore it because I felt like I was too busy to deal with this right now, and I’d get around to it on Monday.
By nightfall, I was doubled over in agony, peeing blood. I was in no condition to either get in the car, or sit in an ER waiting room. I googled UTI cures, and hobbled to the kitchen for baking soda and raw garlic.
After downing enough garlic to choke a goat, and chasing it with baking soda water, I stopped bleeding and the pain receded, and I was able to sleep.
That infection haunted me for the next 4 years. I was beginning to think that the only way to kill it was cremation. Long story short, I’d just spent two weeks on antibiotics, and the day after I stopped, I could feel it coming back. 2 days after that, it was full-blown again.
I went to the computer looking for something new to try, and came across a forum on IC, which I didn’t have, but I was scanning for any useful bladder tips and saw a reference to cayenne pepper. I thought, “I’ve never tried that.” and went to the kitchen for the bottle I’d had for 6 years. I took about 1/4 tsp, and in less than an hour I felt a sort of warm tingling in my bladder (which freaked me out), and then the UTI symptoms suddenly began receding. I felt better, and better, and then I went to the bathroom, and it was better, and then I took another dose..by the end of the day I had no symptoms left. I went to bed cautiously optimistic, but prepared to be disappointed again, too.
I woke up the next day completely pain-free, with a full, easy flow of crystal clear urine. If I hadn’t been sitting down, I’d have fallen over. It turns out, cayenne is an almost magical cure for some types of gram negative UTI’s.
Who knew?
The only problem was, I got a new, different UTI 2 months later…thanks to an intestinal Candida overgrowth from the useless antibiotics I took before the cayenne. (I developed other problems from those antibiotics, too, but that’s going in a blog post)
Curing that second infection took 3 weeks, and through that infection I realized why the first UTI almost always leads to recurring infections.
So, I’d cured a gram negative infection and a gram positive infection naturally, and commented about it on the Kresser blog, and other women were getting cured, and e-mailing me with various questions, and more women were getting cured, and about the time 50+ women had been cured of antibiotic-resistant infections, it occurred to me that a blog with all this information on it would be useful and time-saving.
If you’re reading this because you’re considering trying these things, I strongly suggest you talk to your doctor about it. I’m not one.
I’m just your average Jane, UTI Nerd.