Pussy Talk - What's causing your frequent UTI's and what to do about it?

[MUSIC] In today's episode, we're joined by our resident Pajara Micahbiam natuphath Greta to talk about all things urinary tract infections. So you're going to hear us abbreviate it to UTI. So we're not saying STI, it's not a sexually transmitted infection, we're talking about UTIs. And most importantly, we're actually going to talk about the difference between acute versus chronic UTIs, as well as something else that's really important to understand, which is embedded UTIs. So we'll talk about that bit later on in the podcast. But before we jump on Greta and I were actually talking about our own personal experiences. And I think it's actually perfect to discuss because it's actually so fitting towards the difference between a chronic UTI and a UTI or individuals that suffer chronic UTIs versus acute UTIs. So Greta, tell us about your experience. So mine is an acute UTI experience. It's the only UTI I have ever experienced. I've got other stories with journal conditions, but not so much with UTIs. The only UTI I ever got was the day of my 21st birthday. I had had sex the night before, which is the most common way that people get UTIs. But like I'm just trying to have some fun. Yeah, just fun. And now I'm bleeding. Yeah, yeah. So I had had sex the night before work up on my 21st birthday with the most horrible pain I have ever experienced. Like burning all the way up my urethra, it felt like I was on fire, like that kind of pain where you want to cry and you can't even sit down for hours. And I was meant to go into work that day and I had to call in with UTI, which is hard to explain to male bosses. And took the day off on my birthday, drank probably four to five liters of water. And mine actually cleared. I might have had some ural just from the chemist, just like over the counter medication that you can get for UTIs and mine cleared within 24 hours. But it was a very horrible experience. And it's not that straightforward for so many people. Yeah. And like honestly, to clear it within that amount of time is, you know, that's insane. Like I know my most recent UTI was when I was in Bali and it came on within a couple of hours. I felt the pain. But by lunchtime, I was being blood and it was like, it was kind of like chronically, like it intends, I guess, the symptoms that I was like, okay, there's no amount of garlic or water or anything. Or like, do they ever see or anything that's going to like save me at this point? I literally have to go and get the antibiotics, which we'll talk about different types of treatments and everything a bit later on. So I guess your case is such a classic acute UTI never had it before. And it was pretty much cleared very quickly. And mostly because there's been a movement of bacteria. Yeah. You, you, you, you caused a lot of inflammation, really intense, but really sure. There was no blood and it didn't impact any of my other organs. So it was a pretty like clear cut UTI. Okay. And then on the other hand, I unfortunately have had chronic UTIs. Thankfully, most of them not actually in my adulthood. So I had most of them when I was young. So from about grade one to about grade four, I had UTIs all the time. I remember taking off so much time of school because it was, you know, as a kid, you're like, this isn't normal. I can't even stand without feeling like I need to pee. Whereas as an adult, you know that you don't actually need to pee. Like you know that there's no, there's nothing there. I left it your bladder. But as a kid, you're like, I can't get off this toilet. Otherwise, I'm going to pee my pants. Yeah. And I, every single time I had a UTI, it could have been every like three months, I'd say I'd had multiple per year. And every single time it would be that extreme pain, the burning, bleeding. And had to take antibiotics every time until they got to a point where I think I was in a back grade four. And my mom was just like, well, what the hell are we doing for this? Because she's just ridiculous at getting them so frequently. Of course, like we weren't extremely holistic in that sense growing up. And the treatment was like long term antibiotics. So I pretty much stayed on antibiotics for six months. And then didn't get another one until I was about 21 or 22. Yeah. So that did it for you after chronic QTIs. Yeah. And I wonder if it was because, you know, each course of antibiotics just didn't clear it enough, like in it just kind of subtly stayed there and waited for the perfect time for it to come about again. Yeah. So that actually sounds more like that typical chronic or possibly embedded UTI, where we do need long term antibiotics. Uh-huh. I guess the difference between you and I in that sense, it could have been the fact of like the clearance, like whether that bacteria wasn't cleared out completely and just that it keeps resurfacing. Yeah. So that's kind of the definition of like an embedded UTI or chronic. You can kind of all embedded UTIs are chronic, but not all chronic UTIs are embedded. And basically what embedded means is that it wasn't fully cleared the first time. The bacteria or fungi or whatever it might be has kind of borrowed in further. Maybe it's made all the way up to the bladder and inserted itself into the bladder wall. And that's where it's then embedded in the wall. Okay. I know we're going to jump into that later, but I think like this. Yeah. Let's just get into it now. Yeah. It's so interesting. Yeah. And I guess most people know the symptoms of a UTI. So are they kind of the same as like a standard UTI versus an embedded UTI? Yeah. So all the symptoms are pretty much the same. So that yeah, like burning on urination, feeling like you need to pee all the time, a fullness as well with embedded or chronic, you might have more of a bladder involvement. So you might feel I'm a fullness in the bladder, like not like you need to pee, but like it's almost like bloated, like I'm heaviness in that area. And then also back pain, like kidney pain as well. Okay. So with the embedded UTIs, what's the testing and the differential? So how can they actually find if it's embedded? So it is actually quite tricky. So for all UTIs, the way that they test it is by a urine sample. So the urine sample tell us what microbes are found. So in an acute UTI, it's probably in the urethra. So as you urinate, you're going to take out some of those microbes and they'll be in that urine. Whereas with an embedded UTI, the symptoms come and go and the microbes because they're embedded in that wall. They're not always going to come out in that urine sample. So because they're embedded in the wall, and I know we've talked about this before, but they have biofilms. So they'll usually make the bacterial biofilm meaning that they've kind of encased themselves in this protective layer, which means that they might actually not come out in the urine. It is a little bit trickier when you have symptoms and when you have more of like an acute symptom of your embedded UTI, you're more likely to have microbes seen in that test. But if you don't have symptoms, they might actually be dormant, I guess. Yeah. You're not always going to get a positive urine sample to say that there's a microbe in there because it's basically embedded itself in for the purpose of almost hiding. Exactly. So no one can kind of see it and catch it. Yeah. Okay. Exactly. Yeah, so it's hiding. So you might have someone with an embedded UTI of like two years worth, you might get some urine samples in that two years, which say they're positive for certain microbes, and then others that are completely clear. Like it looks like you don't have a UTI. Other tests that you can then do to identify if you have an embedded UTI, like are there scans or anything like that specialist tests? They can do scans like an ultrasound and it is tricky. They don't see everything, but they can kind of tell if the bladder wall is thickened. They can kind of tell if there's like a buildup of. Or if there's like activity in there. Yeah, like your activity there, but it's not 100%. And then the other way that they can test as well as they can put like cameras in there, but it's a bit more invasive. Uh-huh. So I've heard of a few cases of this. So I remember there was actually someone that I went to uni with and she was saying at the time that she had all of these random symptoms here and they're like, you know, when the elderly get UTIs, how they also get like this cognitive decline, like they. It's almost like dementia symptoms amplify and they can't recall things like this brain fog. They can also like feel depressed or anxious, like mood can change drastically. And I remember with this particular girl that I went to uni with, she was feeling all of these symptoms plus randomly on and off sometimes feeling that burning. And the sensation as well, like with the UTI. And every single sample kept coming back negative until she went to the specialist. More than likely she would have got an ultrasound done and they're like, hey, there's actually. There's something there that's, you know, that's presenting itself. And until that was treated, then she. Like then she was able to get over all of those symptoms. But it wasn't until they actually, you know, did the further testing, but up until that point, I guess probably had been a little bit gas-lighted by a standard test in the sense of saying, you know, there's everything is fine. Yeah, and people that's so common that they feel really gas-lighted when they have an embedded UTI and they get sent to the pelvic floor physio, venting, it's just about your muscles, you're just anxious, and really they're using infection there. Yeah, yeah. So what are the other microbes that are then usually associated with the UTI? Yeah, so there's quite a few, and so there's, you know, there's hundreds probably that can be associated with the UTI. The most common is E. coli, and that's usually seen in the more like acute UTIs, not so much in embedded, but it still can be seen in embedded. Also in terricoccus fecalus, so e.v. carlis, which usually comes from the gut microbiome. So that is a microbe that you'd usually find if you're wiping back to front or if you know your hygiene practices aren't way up there, having anal sex, and then going back into the genital sex, so things like that. The other common microbes are like strutococcus, staphococcus as well, which can just come from like this skin-on-skin contact. Citrobacter is a common one. And then we've got things like the more sexually transmitted UTIs like urea plasma, micro plasma, chlamydia and chryumeniasis as well. Let's story through, I guess, the medical kind of conventional model of how UTI would then be assessed and treated. So typically the first point of call is do a urine sample often if it's like high blood cells, then they're like okay, there's an infection. And then if there is the presence of ecoli, that's usually what's what's tested most of the time. Other microbes like all these other microbes that you just mentioned, are they usually tested in standard conventional urine samples? They're not usually, although it will say it'll basically say whether there's a cultureable microbe there. So it will say like high growth of bacteria. So one tells us non-specific yeah, but it'll say high growth of bacteria or high growth of fungi. And then we can kind of tell that that is causing the UTI. There shouldn't be any bacteria in there. So if there's any bacteria in there, we can say that there's a UTI going on. Okay, so let's say for example, it could say there's a high count of bacteria. Ecoli might not be present. But because there's the presence of bacteria, it could be any of those other different types of bacterial strains that you just mentioned. Exactly. It could be anything. So and the treatment's so different for for different strains. So where the conventional approach kind of lacks is that there's no kind of specificity with the microbes. So they're just going to throw kind of the same antibiotic microbes. And it almost actually sounds very similar to skin swab testing. Because I'm not sure if you yeah, if you've seen a skin swab analysis before, they'll say, I might be exact wording, but it would say like positive growth of bacterial overgrowth or something like that. And then it would say all-comensal bacteria. And it would say like triple plus. And it's like, okay, but that triple plus, yeah, strep is a commensal bacteria like stuff is a commensal bacteria. But doesn't mean that it's good for it to be in that amount. So yeah. So what other testing is then available for people to find out the types of microbes? Because like you just said, there's so many different types of treatments that are available dependent on the type of microbes. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure there's more than just this, but the one that I usually use is the Neutropath. I think it's called complicated UTI screen. And it tests for lots of different bacterial microbes. And then a few different fungi. And all of those STI's mentioned as well. So it can tell us if there's like an underlying cause, like an STI as well as an UTI. If there's multiple microbes in there, or if it's just one microbe. And then it will tell us more about how much inflammation is being produced because of which microbe it is and how to actually treat it. That's amazing. So I recently just did one of those tests on one of my clients. And she had, she has a history of chronic UTIs. And I was like, okay, we need to see if there's something else that's there because her most recent course of antibiotics she did. And she still had those symptoms of like a bit of a heavy kind of pelvis, a little bit of burn. Like just, just the sensation. It was like there's something there. It's not impact to my quality of life or day-to-day symptoms. But it's kind of there and it's negling. And when we did the test, she had urea plasma. Can you talk to us a little bit about urea plasma and what that is? So urea plasma, it gets classed as an STI. It's not always an STI, but I guess it does get passed sexually. So it's a sexually transmitted infection. It sometimes doesn't cause any symptoms. So I think it's around like 60 to 80% of women carry urea plasma. And a lot of them won't have symptoms. But if you have symptoms, then it might be worth treating it. So it's one of those things you don't always have to treat. And I kind of think of it as like an amplifier. Like it might not be the only cause of your symptoms, but it might amplify other microbes and create the perfect environment for those other microbes like a coli or ephicolus to come and run rampant. So because it's there, it's kind of like the gateway, the gateway to UTI. Okay. And is that something that you can then focus on treating holistically as well? You can treat it holistically. I will say it's pretty hard, but it's definitely doable. So I kind of I treat it based on their symptoms and what's going on for them. And if it is really severe and causing a lot of symptoms, well, then it might be good for them to get antibiotics whilst we work on those underlying drivers and work on supportive therapies. But you can clear it holistically. You just need to be prepared for it to take sort of three, four plus months. Yeah, it takes a bit of time. Especially like what you've just mentioned before about that connection with the gut. Like you've got microbes have the potential to influence the urinary tract. It's so important that within also thinking about the symptoms that are going on with the gut potentially, even for people that have chronic UTIs, I got test. If that is, you know, warranted as well to try to see what's going on there. Yeah, 100% because if they have high E coli and high enterococcus in the gut, we need to treat it there too because they're going to translocation if they've got gut symptoms, if they've got chronic diarrhea and things like that, they're going to get translocation to the vaginal microbiome and then to the urethra as well. So yeah, treating the gut is 100% necessary. Now with treatments of UTIs through the conventional model, now you mentioned your before, your osashis. And you tell us a little bit about what your does because I know for a lot of people, they think that ural acts as an antibacterial. It's more about changing the pH from my memory. So it's more like it kind of stabilizes the pH. So you drink it's like a little sachet of powder that you tip into your water, drink that and then that flushes through your urethra like you would urine. It's more just about controlling the symptoms because of the burning and the pH rather than actually clearing and infection like acting as an antibacterial. Exactly. Yeah. So it doesn't act as an antibacterial, but I guess in terms of flushing, if you're drinking a lot of it and you can do that with just water as well, it will kind of flush things out the more urinating, but no, it's not going to act as an actual antibiotic. And I guess that's quite interesting isn't it because really, is the benefit just because I'm drinking a whole lot more water because I'm actually trying to get more sachets in. Yeah, there's part of it is that there's definitely some merit to it changing the pH and also probably in the same way that we use de-manus, which we can talk about, that it kind of coats the urinary tract. So it might be not allowing those microbes to kind of attach to the wall. And how about the treatment options then? So let's think about like holistically what are the treatment options between like a chronic UTI and acute UTI? What would you do? So I do treat them quite differently and it really depends on the severity. So if you've got an acute UTI like I had, you've had sex and then haven't peed and then you've got this acute UTI, you honestly might be able to get rid of it with your cram reduces, with your de-manus, with your water. It might not need antibiotics. It's when it goes on for more than three days or it keeps coming back that we really need to look at antibiotics because there's a risk that the bacteria will go up to the bladder and then also to the kidneys and cause infection there. It is something that we do want to use antibiotics for if needed. In terms of holistically, we use things like when I say cram reduced, I mean like really 100% organic cram reduced. There is some merit to cram reduced, but I prefer de-manus, which is the active constituent from cram reduced. That is like a powder and it's a sugar alcohol, but basically goes all the way down to the urethroin creates that coating so that microbes can't attach to the wall and it basically acts as like a flushing agent. It's almost like gold de-manus. It's great, but it's so hard to get your hands in it. It is. It's like you can barely find it in chemists, like it's not something that's readily available all the time. Even in health food stores, back to our health food store days, we're working together. I think there was one brand we would order it from and one of the companies was actually based in New Zealand. It wasn't even an Australian company and it was about $90 for one bottle. It was, that's true. It's not easy to get these days, but it is it's hard to kind of just walk into a health food store and get it. But yeah, I guess knowing what microbiotreating de-manus can be amazing if it's E-coli. It's very specific for E-coli. For the other types of like chronic UTIs, I wouldn't use it as much. Can you explain to us a little bit about how you would then use de-manus ongoing if you have a chronic UTI? So if it's something where you keep getting that E-coli UTI coming back, I would use de-manus as more like a prophylactic long term. So you can use, I mean, it's a teeny tiny amount that you use. So one scoop is like a meal, maybe a gram. So it would be something like one to two scoops daily ongoing. And then as soon as you get like a little niggle or a burning sensation, you would up it to about four to five scoops per day. So we're using it. We're up and downing the dose as we as we need it. Okay. What are the other habits and things that you recommend for people to try to prevent UTIs? The simple one, wipe, front to back. Just all of your hygiene practices. So making sure you're washing your hands before, washing your hands and your genitals before sex if you can is it possible? Obviously that's not always going to happen. And in the moment, we're not like, okay, just one second, I need to go ahead and wash my hands. But as much as we can keep on top of hygiene, that will be beneficial. So I always recommend clients to even after sex go and Pee, so your name was Shaman. of vulva in the shower if you can or at least wet a face cloth and washing vulva just with water and then also always washing your vulva after like swimming the gym sweating so all of those hygiene practices where microbes might be able to sit there for a while and make their way to the urethra keeping those up and then also staying hydrated so drinking that 2.5 three liters of water a day wearing really breathable underwear as well so bamboo is number one and taking underwear if you are getting really sweaty like the gym and how about in terms of diet so I thought of this before when you said first time I ever got one was the night after my 21st birthday and I'm like I wonder if it's the combination of this x plus if there was like alcohol involved as well is this like why that specific combination? Yeah no that's a really good point actually so alcohol has a few different ways that it affects UTIs one is that it causes like tissue degradation that's obviously long term so if you're someone who's like binge drinking every weekend it's not going to be great for your vaginal health because that tissue is not getting that chance to regenerate or as you know it's impacting it and then just the fact that it's a toxicant so you've got this toxin flowing around the body and your immune system is a bit busy breaking that down to sort out UTI. I think as well it's important to mention that often when we're thinking about alcohol some people are like yeah but I don't drink too much alcohol I just have like one glass of an evening with my dinner and it's like well actually if you add that up and then there's an extra day and there that it's two glasses instead of one by the end of the week that's somewhere between seven to nine glasses and in the course of a month that's 30 to 40 or more glasses so it's something to consider because I know when people are trying to get on top of their health and they're trying to look at alcohol as a potential driver there can really be that own individual bias to like that's not a lot oh yeah that's a lot. Yeah that's such a good point I always like to think of it as like your weekly amount of alcohol because it's all usually say yeah I don't drink a lot but then I just do on the weekends yeah you say like yeah how many would you drink on the weekend oh if I'm out it might be like all right seven or eight drinks yeah that might be cool then 10 drinks. Yeah like one every day yeah yeah so I think that's something that's really important to consider I don't know if you've seen a lot in clinic but I've actually seen a lot lately where I've had so many clients that have had infections of whatever kind whether it might be due to eyes skin staffing infections or just reoccurrent like infections like in the sinuses or whatever that might be and honestly the comment and I'm gonna add up between most of them having a suppressed immune system is that alcohol yeah and like and as soon as they're like I went 12 weeks without alcohol no infections yeah I see so much in vaginal infections as well one of the things I always yeah cut it out for 12 weeks while we're healing the tissue yeah and then you can reintroduce I don't so hard I got always so bad because I know that like people have events and everything on but the realistic thing is is like it's not contributing anything nutritionally to our diet it's only just causing more tissue degradation like you said and it's suppressing your immune system and also impacting your sleep quality for that night and the purpose of your sleep quality is to help with your immune systems yeah how about sugar sugar yeah sugar can impact especially the UTIs driven by fungi so I think we've talked about this before in that high sugar diets or high carbohydrate diets will feed Candida which is causes things like thrush um cop diet thrush and so a high sugar diet might contribute to that fungi UTI not so much with bacterial UTIs but it'll still cause that like change in your blood glucose breakdown it yeah it'll still affect things the more that your blood sugar is kind of unbalanced yes yeah okay that's I guess that's important to note because something that is actually quite common is people that have diabetes then get more more likely to get things like UTIs as well because of that blood sugar being so dysregulated yeah yeah blood sugar and their immune system as well anything from a habit perspective so you mentioned about like the cleaning is there anything that's got to do with like a front of like you know whether it's I guess tampons and pads and stuff that's probably more so be general infections but do you think that could be correlated with anything with UTIs as well yeah it could be actually especially things like sitting in period underwear so yeah period underwear the big one that I come across with clients is because you're you're wear pair of period underwear all day it's really thick material yeah you're then very hot very hot you're sitting in that blood as well so the blood is just pulling and sitting on your bolivar so yes it can cause some changes in pH in the vagina but it can also change the pH in the urethra as well and maybe also bring some of those microbes from the vagina microbiome into the urethra because it's sitting there so things like that and also like swimming so the same like if you're sitting in bed there's all day as well yeah it's honestly just so ridiculous like water all three alls need to be so close together and it's just like everything so it's just so close as well yeah put a bit of space for train everything yeah yeah that would do in English yes we get a lot of like cross microbiome contamination yeah yeah okay except so I think that cop is most of the stuff from a UTI perspective so we just really wanted to make the difference between helping people understand the difference between acute chronic and embedded UTI and that if there are potential signs or symptoms that you've got a chronic UTI that maybe to look into a little bit further in terms of the other microbes that can be associated with it like for example that case where I said hey there's urea plasma and it's like well actually this person has been suffering with UTI as for 20 or years yeah and now has found like that they've got urea plasma and that's an important component to address as well that's really good point and also treating the partner as well if that is the case yep excellent point well thank you so much for sharing all of your insights I'll pop some information in the show notes and for those that do want to work with Gritit as well you can book into broccoli by the link below thank you what for sure thank you