Can cystitis and thrush be linked?
If you suffer from both recurring thrush and cystitis, or find that when you develop one, the other follows soon after, you’ll know how frustrating it can be.
Find out what the link isWhat are 5 signs and symptoms of a UTI?
5 common signs of a UTI include frequent urination, burning when peeing, only peeing a little despite the urge, pink urine suggesting the presence of blood, or strong smelling or visibly cloudy urine. Other symptoms including back pain or very dark urine may indicate a kidney infection instead, in which case your doctor should be notified immediately.
What are the most common symptoms of a UTI?
Identifying the symptoms of a UTI quickly, can often help give you the best chance of managing them. Here I run through 5 of the most common signs and symptoms to look out for:
1. Frequent urination
Frequent urination can come about because the bacteria causing the UTI is irritating the very delicate lining of your urinary tract. One of the best things you can do here is to really keep up with your liquids intake and especially water.
People often worry, and similarly if someone is suffering from diarrhoea; people can worry if they're going to the toilet quite regularly, they might feel that they should cut back on water. Perhaps they shouldn't drink too much or it could make things worse?
But instead, the exact opposite is true. If those bacteria are irritating the lining of your urinary tract, then we really want you to keep up your water intake so you're able to help flush out that bad bacteria. Remember, if your urine is quite concentrated, that is also an irritating state. So, we want to drink more to make your urine more dilute, which in turn will hopefully decrease some of that irritation.
2 litres of water daily is absolutely key, for prevention too, but especially if you have caught an infection. I also like to touch on options such as your good quality cranberry juice
So, something like your Biotta Wild Mountain Cranberry juice is a good quality one with no added refined sugars. Again though, we wouldn't want to take away from your minimum water intake. So, this would only be an additional amount, maybe 100mls a day, on top of your 2 litres of water.
Helpfully, cranberry juice contains a structure called D-mannose, which helps to prevent the bacteria from sticking and latching onto your urinary tract. They've got little arms called fimbriae that can facilitate them to stick - so they're very clever in that respect!
My final point on helping to limit the frequent urge to pee is to limit any other irritants such as alcohol or caffeine as these could risk encouraging more frequent urination.
Then, of course, on to the positives - if you suspect you have a current infection, what can you take to help? This is when you can introduce a remedy such as Uva-ursi & Echinacea.
This is a licensed remedy to help relieve minor urinary complaints associated with cystitis. By definition, cystitis is inflammation of the bladder. But we know that urinary tract infections, or UTIs, are the wider umbrella term. So, it could actually take hold at any point throughout the urinary tract. So, this would definitely be one to introduce if you suspected you had an infection – and hopefully, you can have a better idea of when this may be, as we run through all the symptoms.
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2. Burning when peeing
Burning when peeing is again, unfortunately, all down to the bacteria that are also causing that irritation, and this can easily rise to this burning effect when we go to the toilet.
As the bacteria start to become flushed out, with any luck this symptom will start to dissipate too, and so we would hope that it wouldn't last too long, but perhaps up to a few days in some cases.
Now, this is another point on the Uva-ursi & Echinacea Complex. If your symptoms don't start to clear up within seven days, then we would say to stop taking it and go to the doctor. This isn't safety concern, but if it's not working for you after seven days, then there could be something else more likely to be at play.
And so, we would never want you to continue taking any remedy, for that matter, if it, unfortunately, doesn't seem to be working for that cause. So, that's just a little bit of advice that will be on the product information leaflet, and, of course, I just like to explain why that 'seven day' snipper of advice is there.
Now, back to the 'burning' sensation; this is often quite a burning, or uncomfortable sensation lower down in the urinary tract. Now, if you have any pain further up in your pelvis or around in your back, this would be when you should go straight to the doctor.
This could suggest that, that bacteria has transported further back, further deeper inside, perhaps towards the kidneys, especially if the pain is in your back. And therefore, this would be one to switch over to the doctor for their advice.
3. Pink or red urine
Visibly pink or red urine can suggest there's a little bit of blood in your urine. Again, this often comes about as a result of the irritation caused by the bacteria at the root of the cause.
Pink suggests that there's just a smaller amount of blood present, but red suggests that there may be a higher volume of blood. Now, although a little bit of blood can be quite common, and again, down to that irritation, this again, is a symptom that we would say, "now, it's time to go to your doctor." This is just so they can do their checks and help confirm that it definitely is a UTI.
As always, we can't make diagnoses here at A.Vogel, or over the internet. So, although for something like a UTI, a self-diagnosis from people at home may be appropriate. If there are any kind of strange or kind of more serious symptoms, then your doctor needs to confirm this.
The next sign or symptom is releasing small amounts of urine. And this also goes hand in hand with urgency, which is another really common sign or symptom of a UTI. Again, unfortunately, just relating to that bacteria, that irritation in the urinary tract gets confused with the feeling of needing to go to the toilet. And that's what makes us go more regularly. So, it's not just more frequent, but it can almost feel like unnecessary trips, because you may just be producing a really small amount of urine each time. But as I say, it's important to try and flush through your urinary tract. So, if you feel you need to go, try and go as soon as possible just to help your system flush through.
4. Peeing only small amounts at a time
Unfortunately, this symptom can be particularly troublesome when trying to go about your daily business. If you're out and about, or at your work and really frequent toilet trips aren't so feasible, then this is when it can get quite frustrating.
Therefore, again, with this symptom, this would be one that I would say to try and introduce your Uva-ursi & Echinacea quite quickly.
In some cases, although the Uva-ursi & Echinacea can take up to a few days to really help, actually, it can very often work quite quickly, especially if you just take in a small splash of water. Remember you can take it up to five times daily, so keep up with the frequent doses.
5. Strong-smelling urine
Strong-smelling urine might be something that you notice, and perhaps, even, before some of the other symptoms. Again, this symptom can suggest there's a presence of bacteria, which is a common cause of UTIs. Again, if you notice this, something you can do is introduce something like your Uva-ursi & Echinacea complex just to try and fend off that bacteria quickly.
Another symptom just in line with this, may be that you notice cloudiness. This can also suggest there's a little bit of bacteria present. Once more, you can get in there quickly with the remedies, if this is the case, before the bacteria have a chance to latch on to your urinary tract cells.
In terms of the colour of your urine, whilst cloudiness may suggest a little bit bacteria if your urine is very dark in colour, then this is a bit of a red flag. This could suggest that your kidneys have been affected.
In this situation a doctor would need to step in there just to do some checks and perhaps offer you some treatment there.
