To stop UTI pain starting in an hour:
- 1 tsp baking soda (sodium bicarb, for you Brits) in 16 oz. water.
This raises your urine pH quickly, which slows down UTI pathogen feeding and breeding, and reduces pain dramatically in less than an hour. (UNLESS you have a staph, strep, or entero UTI, in which case NEVER drink soda water. You need ascorbic acid Vitamin C.)
If you have high BP issues, you don’t want to drink more than this one glass because of the sodium, so after the first emergency dose, drink… - Lemon water: 1 tablespoon of lemon juice in 16 oz water.
Counter-intuitively, this has the same action as baking soda in raising urine pH because lemon and lime juice are alkaline-forming in your body. In my experience, it’s not quite as fast and effective as baking soda, but it’s better for your body as a maintenance measure while you treat your infection, and it’s better than nothing if it’s the middle of the night, you’re in pain, and you don’t have baking soda. - Raw garlic: 2 average-size minced cloves.
This will powerfully affect your UTI in short order, killing off pathogens and reducing your pain level. It should be taken by swallowing small chopped pieces with water, like pills, with some food, like toast. You should chase it with a shot of pure lemon juice, 1.5 oz. This helps you absorb the garlic, especially if you have heartburn. Yes, you read that right. If you get heartburn you need to take acid.
Read more here to explain why. - Cayenne pepper: 1/4 tsp mixed into a glass of water or a spoonful of honey.
Take with a little food, like the garlic. This has a dramatic positive effect on some gram negative infections: it kills one strain of E. coli outright. This is something that will greatly relieve your pain if your UTI is caused by a certain type of gram-negative pathogen. If you feel a warm tingling in your bladder about 40 minutes after taking, followed by a sharp decrease in UTI symptoms, take 1/4 tsp every 4 waking hours for 3 days, then with every meal for 2 more days. Use urine test strips to make sure they’re clear at the 5 minute mark, and then you’re done.
If, however, you feel like it irritated your infection, STOP. It can go either way, depending on what kind of infection you have. - Oh, and I beg of you, NO CRANBERRY JUICE. And no ascorbic acid Vitamin C! Please. Just don’t.
Unless you have a UTI that has cultured positive for staph, against which it’s quite effective.